First question: Why has it been needed a long time? On you latter question: They don't feel that all infrastructure software must be free (as in beer). You ar

First question: Why has it been needed a long time? On you latter question: They don't feel that all infrastructure software must be free (as in beer). You are simply conflating the free (as in speech) with the free (as in beer) implicitly with no justification. If you are going to make money from a software development project, you need a business plan. You need a way to make money. It is absolutely true that I won't pay money for software that does not have a free software license. I've lived in that world before as a programmer. It sucks! Does that mean that I won't pay money for free software? No, it really doesn't. In fact many of the companies I have worked for in the past have spent a lot of money for free software. One company I worked for spent about $5 million dollars a year for GCC and associated tool chains (and that was in the 90's!) But the problem is that a lot of companies frankly have extremely poor business plans. Something on the order of: Write software ??? Profit Now, like I said, you can write proprietary software all you want. I won't buy it. I don't want it. It doesn't give me the ability to use it in the way that I require. What's actually slightly surprising to an old guy like me is that all of my colleagues agree with that stance. Don't want it. Not at any price. Not even free (as in beer). What that means is that "Write software --> ??? --> Profit" is just not a viable business plan. I have absolutely no problem with this. In fact, I'm happy about this. If you want to make money, you have to offer a service other than copying bits. You can charge me for writing the software. You can charge me for a service associated with the software. You can make money in other ways and enter into a kind of consortium for constructing the software so that all parties have reduced cost. I've personally even paid money for free (as in freedom) software simply because it was worth the money to make sure the authors were able to live (Note: this is not a viable business plan, but sometimes it still happens). BTW, currently the company that pays me makes money by selling Golf holidays (and spa holidays, and lately horse racing, and bicycling holidays). Most programmers work for companies like that.