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Comment by cirgue | Hacker News Reader

I am increasingly happy to pay for software and services as long as the organization producing the software has no relationship with advertisers. I would rather pay money than use something for free that includes advertising. If there are good open-source alternatives I will always prefer those, but there are definitely some things that open-source will never be able to really make work effectively (notably anything that relies on having an attractive and efficient GUI)

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What happens when the product becomes unsupported, or the company goes under? I'd like to see more software sold with a code escrow clause -- if development stops or the company no longer offers support, the source is released by a third party. Maybe even under an open license.

If sublime text were to end all support today, I would have gotten triple-digit returns on that 75$ investment. Same for most software. Don’t get me wrong, unsupported paid software sucks and open sourcing abandoned projects means I would be more likely to buy something from that person/company again, but on some level a market clearing price takes this risk into account if we’re just talking about consumer applications.

It certainly depends on the software, too. Some things are more fragile than others, for one thing. Perhaps more importantly, some software is harder to migrate away from, e.g. if it has a database, especially some custom file format.

Out of interest, what linux apps have you paid for?

I've paid for RubyMine, and PHP Storm. Not exclusively Linux, but that was the platform I was running it on.

Not OP, but: I have sunk a few hundred bucks into Steam after it added Linux support. I had a Steam account before that, but I never purchased anything that cost money.

Intellij IDEA, also Steam or GOG games

As with others here, various JetBrains tools and Linux-compatible Steam games (I have 75 and counting). Also a file comparison tool called Beyond Compare.

If Adobe released their apps on Linux (more specifically Photoshop and Premiere) I'd buy them in a heartbeat. Unfortunately they seem more interested in supporting the iPad if recent news is to be believed.

Edit: Just remembered I have a Sublime Text license too, although I stopped using it a while ago.

A couple of months of Intellij because a customer wanted me to work on a Java project which used that IDE. I delivered in the first month and paid for the second one because I didn't realize it was autorenewing. That was a long time ago.

I also received a Steam game from a friend as Christmas present. I didn't pay but he did.

Probably nothing else.

I used to get my distributions from Walnut Creek, then bought a few boxed editions of Mandrake and SuSE, for several years subscribed to Linux Journal since the yearly days, occasionally bought Linux magazines with CDs on them, did FSF donations a couple of times, nowadays every time I download Ubuntu I always donate donations.

Likewise on Windows apps that I use regularly like Notepad++, jAlbum, Sublime Text, Paint.NET, Thunderbird, Firefox...

I'm also interested in this question. Because looking at myself, I have paid for several apps on both Windows and MacOS but never on Linux. Although to be fair I stopped using Linux as a desktop OS before I had the economic security needed to purchase apps in the first place.

I pay for elementary OS and Godot Engine on Patreon.

CLion and SmartGit

In current use:

- 010editor

- Jetbrains Toolbox

- VMWare Workstation

- Various steam purchases

Years ago:

- Corel Office

- Crossover Office

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