Well, if something is genuinely "useful", the people who find it useful are generally willing to pay for it; unless they choose to spend their resources on some

Well, if something is genuinely "useful", the people who find it useful are generally willing to pay for it; unless they choose to spend their resources on something that they deem even more useful. Thus in general I think things should have a price; in order to facilitate the construction and maintenance of said thing. More subtly; this also gives the users of that thing more of a say in how that is built -- i.e in accordance with their needs as opposed to arbitrary design or engineering decisions, etc. In other words, having paying customers keeps you accountable. This is why so much publication-associated academic software is garbage from a usability perspective - no one has an incentive to care about users; therefore people don't. A curious observation about most users: Most Users often prefer the good/service that works better / easier to use; even if closed; to the open source one that is perceived to be not as good. Many, many programmers / academics (those poor academics..) use mac laptops. They're nice. Open Source is also great from securing long-term existence, and from a reproducibility, and hackability perspective. Pursuing a commercial open source model, if viable, could really address both short + long-term sustainability. I truly don't think mathematics departments in the US are "too poor" to pay for software; there are nice offices, budgets for events, very expensive journals, etc. Many universities have massive endowments. It is just that they often choose to spend it elsewhere. I'd recommend charging a higher price to commercial entities and universities, charging students a small fee; and giving it for free to "3rd world", developing, etc. countries. Selling into the library budget, or IT budget, might not be the worst idea. If your student has a cell phone, they can afford to pay 20 bucks a month for the cloud sage edition; instead of buying more booze, pizza, or another movie ticket. If they are not doing that; it either means they value some other service more highly; or they don't value their education & their time.