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I don't think the problem is that highcharts costs money, but that there are no good FOSS alternatives(I embarked on a fairly extensive search last week for a F

I don't think the problem is that highcharts costs money, but that there are no good FOSS alternatives(I embarked on a fairly extensive search last week for a FOSS js charting libraries and although I did end up choose one of those for the project, it was not nearly as fleshed out as Highcharts). One thing that tends to happen when you have a very strong commercial library out there, is it often discourages the creation of a FOSS alternative, which is somewhat unfortunate. FOSS is one of the great enablers of modern software engineering and FOSS is far from "gimme software for free and I give you nothing, thanks!" type situation that some people make it out to be.

sanderjd 12y ago
It seems like a big contributor to this problem is that the culture of FOSS is largely hostile to paying for software, even if its source is open and modifiable (but probably not re-distributable). I don't much about this, but I would love to make open source libraries or application that I can sell licenses for, but I'm not very optimistic it would work, and I'm not completely sure why it shouldn't.
- ris 12y ago
  I don't think it's specifically paying for things, it's just developers don't like arbitrary restrictions put on something they rely on. And however you look at it, pricing and pricing structures are essentially arbitrary.