Good tools are worth paying for
As an industry, we’ve long become accustomed (one might even say spoiled) on the no-cost availability of good tools. Those of us that came up with exposure to Linux, GNU, and the FOSS ecosystem in particular (not to mention the concurrent wave of peer-to-peer file sharing) are likely to have this mindset even more deeply entrenched. Have you ever paid money for a compiler? I have not (at least, that I can recall).
This has been an enormous boon for people and young companies wanting to get started: the capital investment required to learn how to build new things in software, actually build them, and build a new business or movement is incredibly low. And that’s been wonderful! It’s created careers, innovations, whole swaths of intellectual and economic growth.
It’s also created a mindset of never paying for our tools unless we absolutely have to. What started as a nice way to help teenagers learn to make websites has become the ideology of the captains of our industry–and their many deputies. And that’s to everyone’s detriment.
