[throw10920]

Developers are also the kind of people who will refuse to pay money for or use proprietary software on principle - regardless of price! I constantly see people on HN suggesting (often highly immature) open-source alternatives to free or reasonably-priced proprietary software for no other reason than the fact that it's open-source.

Just like being an author, it's hard to make a living writing (books : software) unless you're either very skilled+lucky (Brandon Sanderson : Jetbrains) or sell to companies (HR/marketing position at a company : either making B2B software or working for a software company yourself).

[lallysingh]

Proprietary software risks lock in. Most developers experience the pain of that eventually.

You can use that stuff safely if you can survive losing it and continue reasonably (e.g., switch to Emacs or Jenkins). If you can't, it's a huge risk.

[throw10920]

> Proprietary software risks lock in.

This has nothing to do with proprietary software. Sublime Text, for instance, is proprietary software, but there is zero lock-in because it operates on plain text files. This argument is invalid.

[hahajk]

Furthermore, getting new software approved at a big corp can already be a hassle. But at all the places I've worked, seeking approvals for and opening up a funding line to pay for a license increases the hassle 10x.

[throw10920]

This has nothing to do with selling to individual developer-users.