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The whole discussion was about how 'expensive' this particular software was, at $4/mo. $4 is the price of a cup of coffee. If the software makes you more productive than one cup of coffee per month would, then it seems like $4 is not expensive at all. Of those 2286 packages on your PC, how many of them are written by individual software engineers who are trying to make a living by writing software? And how many of them contribute to your overall wellbeing? I'm guessing that 99% of those packages are used by programs that you yourself don't use, that just come packaged with your OS or some other product. The other 1%, yes, I think you should think about paying for. We live in a world where a certain kind of extractive personality--Zuckerberg, Gates, Ellison--makes billions from their software, because they are willing to be an asshole-to-the-hilt with their anti-competitive, unethical, and often downright illegal behavior. The 'nice guys' who write and maintain your compiler (if gcc) or editor (if vim or emacs) or scripting language (virtually all of them) and any number of other tools that we use daily, will struggle to pay their hospital bills in retirement. And yet people balk at $4/mo for software that they might use for years. And even if they only used it for 1 month, that $4 is inconsequential compared to the other factors (like learning curve, time investment, etc). I do think people should be spending some money on their software tools each year. Maybe 1% of their income? That's around $100/mo, which seems like an awful lot, but only in comparison to the current price they're paying of $0. But think of how much better your tools would be, if the developer who makes them could earn a living wage from them, without having to embrace the capitalistic ideals that make us hate computers and software in the firstplace. |
I really dislike this cup of coffee that is commonplace. Buying coffee from Starbucks is really expensive! Coffee costs about 30c to make yourself. Some people buy coffee every day - over a year that can up to a month's rent in a world-class city.
Personally I have paid for a lot of software over the years. I think 95% of the time I have ended up getting almost no value out of those purchases, especially with iOS apps and PC games I never play. I wish I had not been so frivolous with those $4 coffee-cup Steam purcahses and instead spent all that money donating to open source projects which I actually do use every day. In the future I will be trying to do so.