[bmitc]

I feel sentiments like these are straight paranoia. Nothing is forever. And I actually don't think I have experienced a paid piece of software suddenly changing or disappearing or causing headache. Yet, this happens all the time with free, open source software. The person developing it stops, it gets forked, now there's two versions with one the popular one but not developed and a forked one being developed but not popular, and the whole thing is difficult to contribute to because it's a big ball of mud.

I will absolutely pay for software. What's more likely to cause issues? A company getting paid to develop useful software or some free, open source software where the developers have their own little fiefdom? Issues get closed all the time or ignored and then when you push the issue you just get told "that's not the way I do it" or "we're all volunteers and not paid, contributions welcome". Well yea, I would contribute if it wasn't impenetrable and I had confidence the contribution would actually be accepted. I have successfully contributed to larger projects where these things are taken more seriously, but they are the outlier.