Making and maintaining a piece of software and giving it away for free isn't a great business plan, or at best it's an incomplete one.
This attitude totally ignores how hard it is to actually run a software tooling business and collect when you have a free/community offering.
Take the Obsidian note app, for example. It's technically free until you start using it for revenue-generating, work-related activity per their license, but how do they go about enforcing that? If they were to dig through customer data to see who is violating the agreement, they'd get roasted on Twitter in an instant and risk losing their user base. Should they hire attorneys to investigate and shake down violators for the $25/mo fee plus damages? Again, major risk of losing the customer base.
Software devs have to represent a significant, if not majority share of the user base of Obsidian, and I'd bet a year of my salary that most of them aren't paying for it when they're using it for work. Committing to a business plan is an important step, but software's value is directly correlated with it's use, and more widely used software is inherently more valuable, but achieving that kind of growth without giving it away free is a major challenge.
It kinda feels like tipping in the restaurant industry, where folks argue that it's to ensure proper service, when in reality it's often just a way for the restaurant owner to not have to pay minimum wage by offloading that portion of a workers wages onto the customer, who often just doesn't give a tip.
They might loose out on smaller companies that abuse it, but teams and people in larger companies that use it will pay.
If I want to use something, I can pay for it and submit it to get reimbursed or if it's a bigger purchase, I use a company card. I don't have to worry about putting the company in liability and that's something that's understood by many.
Another example, how does Jetbrain make sure that the people paying for their software via personal licenses aren't getting money for it from their companies?
This is a great example, perhaps companies like Jetbrains just assume that a certain percentage of their user base uses their product out of license and they just deal with it, which undermines the original argument. Software inherently wants to be free, but we as a community agree upon the proper way to compensate those make OSS because we're taught that the exchange of money for goods should always happen upfront and there is no other way to conceptualize alternatives, which I disagree with.
Of course. The same thing that happens with piracy.
How much of Adobe, MS and software from other big companies is pirated every year? I've also heard the argument that if they went strict and went against all of them, no one will be familiar with their products and would levitate to something else.
When I was in uni, the majority of people with Adobe programs on their laptops just had it pirated. Now, when they go into industry, if they need to manipulate an image and all they know is Photoshop, guess what they'll ask for?
Same thing here IMO. Jetbrains makes some of their products free with some functionality removed. When the people go into their jobs and if they need that, they'll spend the money.
Same with Obsidian. If you use it and find it useful, when you go to work, you'll make the business case that it could be useful to do the work in an efficient matter. That will also sell others into using it.
I'm not sure what the alternative is here. Is it forbidding free software?
It isn't really a reflection of the valuation of the music.
Free lunches don’t exist for anyone.
SaaS for things that could be run locally is a perfect example. Or algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in social media. Or the advertising panopticon. Or coffee filter DRM. Or smart TV spying. Or ads in the Windows start menu. Or..
The question is if you can provide a better product then your competitors.
>algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in social media
Isn't this optimal though? If I see something but did not engage with it that site just wasted by time.