> The open question is why anyone would buy software for Linux. Well, I'd be interested in one of the following apps: a desktop wiki, an email client, a contac

> The open question is why anyone would buy software for Linux. Well, I'd be interested in one of the following apps: a desktop wiki, an email client, a contact management app, a feed reader, a music player, a scalable image editor, a layout app, a recording app, a guitar effect app, a GIT client, and probably some more. Of course, for each of these, there's some free app somewhere. But each of these free ones have something I don't like. I admit, my willingness-to-pay is quite low. That's partially due to some free apps being available. The better reason, however, is that installing proprietary apps sucks under Linux. I also fear, the regular distro updates will break apps I've payed for. In other words: If there's a way to conveniently download an app from a store or homepage, and to get security and "distro upgrade" updates (maybe, by registering the app automatically with APT during installation), my willingness-to-pay would be quite a bit higher! > The key differentiating factor for _most_ people who use it is that it's free (as in beer). How do you know? Any empirical studies I'm not aware of? Or just the Biased Sample fallacy? > It's hard to see how you can ask people to pay for software now in the hope that it will eventually be good. Dunno. There's a lot of applications that were not 'good' when they were first released. People still bought it.