Free cheese
“There is no free lunch,” they say in America. Translated into Russian, this means: “If you want to get something worthwhile, be ready to fork out!” However, this popular wisdom does not prevent people from dreaming about free cheese, hoping to avoid a mousetrap.
Unlike the material world, in the virtual world it is much easier to fulfill this dream without violating the criminal code. A huge army of amateur programmers creates in the evenings and on weekends and is ready to share their achievements with everyone. Due to this, today there is a situation where virtually any problem can be solved with the help of a free program. Text and image editors, audio and video players, system utilities, and even operating systems ... Take any class of programs, and you will find in it free analogues of commercial products!
That is the theory. In real life, things are a little more complicated.
Free software is a hobby for its author. Therefore, while spending the night at the home computer, an amateur programmer, first of all, seeks to realize his creative impulse. And it is unlikely he will conduct a survey of potential consumers of his program to find out their real needs. Not even because laziness. It’s just that this side of development is not interesting for him: “It’s better to implement this function and this algorithm, which I read about in the magazine, but buttons of different sizes do not bother anyone”.
')
Free programs are often written "for themselves", and therefore are built so that it was convenient for them to work with their creator. After installing such a utility on a computer, you have to deal with the interface for a long time and try to understand the logic of the developer. If this program has a user manual, and its interface is described at least in general terms - consider yourself lucky!
But it often happens that the author’s hands do not reach the author’s writing. Or it can be present only in the native language of the creator, which does not necessarily coincide with yours. And a very rare amateur developer will agree to answer user questions and help solve problems arising in the course of work. As a result, the study of the free program takes much more time, and many of the possibilities remain untapped.
The issue of the quality of the program is no less serious. After all, the development of any program is not only the joy of solving a complex task, but also a tedious, painstaking work on testing and debugging. In most cases, testing and debugging a software product requires no less time and effort than programming. And few of the enthusiastic developers have enough willpower to go through this stage to the end. After all, the solution of the set task is a creative process, but the search and correction of mistakes is pure routine!
Finally, an enthusiastic developer can simply lose interest in his brainchild. One can cite dozens of examples when a wonderful program became obsolete and “left the stage” due to the fact that the author stopped issuing new versions.
Quite different motives are driven by commercial software developers. This is a business.
And like any business, it must focus on the interests of the consumer, otherwise the employees of the company will have nothing to eat. Therefore, teams of professional developers not only do application programming, but also conduct research to their audience, design a user-friendly interface, write a user manual and do not save on the development of a website for their software product. In addition, all developers of commercial software products necessarily provide technical support to their customers.
Of course, for home users, most of the problems of free software are not critical, and many of the advantages of commercial software are not so important as to give money for them. In the end, to master the free program will help "advanced" friend, and the need to sometimes overload the hung computer can be put up with. Therefore, it is on home PCs you can find many free programs for all occasions.
Quite a different situation in the commercial sector. After all, a competent head of the company should pay attention not only to the selling price of the software product, but also to how much its use will cost.
Often it turns out that saving money at the time of purchase over time, turns into a much more serious costs. Lack of documentation for the program or a bad interface requires additional time for employee training. And since there is a “staff turnover” in any firm, it will be necessary to spend time on training regularly. And these are either additional people on the staff of the company, or separation from the work of some of the most experienced employees. Both are expenses, which quickly add up to amounts that significantly exceed the savings on the purchase of a program.
Therefore, competent managers prefer to pay for a normal lunch than to hope for a “free cheese”!
Unlike the material world, in the virtual world it is much easier to fulfill this dream without violating the criminal code. A huge army of amateur programmers creates in the evenings and on weekends and is ready to share their achievements with everyone. Due to this, today there is a situation where virtually any problem can be solved with the help of a free program. Text and image editors, audio and video players, system utilities, and even operating systems ... Take any class of programs, and you will find in it free analogues of commercial products!
That is the theory. In real life, things are a little more complicated.
Free software is a hobby for its author. Therefore, while spending the night at the home computer, an amateur programmer, first of all, seeks to realize his creative impulse. And it is unlikely he will conduct a survey of potential consumers of his program to find out their real needs. Not even because laziness. It’s just that this side of development is not interesting for him: “It’s better to implement this function and this algorithm, which I read about in the magazine, but buttons of different sizes do not bother anyone”.
')
Free programs are often written "for themselves", and therefore are built so that it was convenient for them to work with their creator. After installing such a utility on a computer, you have to deal with the interface for a long time and try to understand the logic of the developer. If this program has a user manual, and its interface is described at least in general terms - consider yourself lucky!
But it often happens that the author’s hands do not reach the author’s writing. Or it can be present only in the native language of the creator, which does not necessarily coincide with yours. And a very rare amateur developer will agree to answer user questions and help solve problems arising in the course of work. As a result, the study of the free program takes much more time, and many of the possibilities remain untapped.
The issue of the quality of the program is no less serious. After all, the development of any program is not only the joy of solving a complex task, but also a tedious, painstaking work on testing and debugging. In most cases, testing and debugging a software product requires no less time and effort than programming. And few of the enthusiastic developers have enough willpower to go through this stage to the end. After all, the solution of the set task is a creative process, but the search and correction of mistakes is pure routine!
Finally, an enthusiastic developer can simply lose interest in his brainchild. One can cite dozens of examples when a wonderful program became obsolete and “left the stage” due to the fact that the author stopped issuing new versions.
Quite different motives are driven by commercial software developers. This is a business.
And like any business, it must focus on the interests of the consumer, otherwise the employees of the company will have nothing to eat. Therefore, teams of professional developers not only do application programming, but also conduct research to their audience, design a user-friendly interface, write a user manual and do not save on the development of a website for their software product. In addition, all developers of commercial software products necessarily provide technical support to their customers.
Of course, for home users, most of the problems of free software are not critical, and many of the advantages of commercial software are not so important as to give money for them. In the end, to master the free program will help "advanced" friend, and the need to sometimes overload the hung computer can be put up with. Therefore, it is on home PCs you can find many free programs for all occasions.
Quite a different situation in the commercial sector. After all, a competent head of the company should pay attention not only to the selling price of the software product, but also to how much its use will cost.
Often it turns out that saving money at the time of purchase over time, turns into a much more serious costs. Lack of documentation for the program or a bad interface requires additional time for employee training. And since there is a “staff turnover” in any firm, it will be necessary to spend time on training regularly. And these are either additional people on the staff of the company, or separation from the work of some of the most experienced employees. Both are expenses, which quickly add up to amounts that significantly exceed the savings on the purchase of a program.
Therefore, competent managers prefer to pay for a normal lunch than to hope for a “free cheese”!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/19907/
All Articles