What to tell my Dad?

tinfoil-hat

tinfoil-hat

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Hi there,

I've installed some Foss software instead Microsoft Office. My Dad wanted to buy office 2021 from Media Markt, which is above 150€. Instead I got him Thunderbird and Libreoffice. He was surprised that you don't have to pay for this software and how well it works. He asked me "Who pays the Developers of this Software" and "How are they financed". I didn't really know how to answer. Maybe you can help me out.
 


Bartman said:
Ya tell him they take donations.

Donate to LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Donate, donation, donations, funding, help, support, LibreOffice
www.libreoffice.org www.libreoffice.org

Thunderbird — Free Your Inbox.

Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize - and it’s loaded with great features!
www.thunderbird.net www.thunderbird.net
Click to expand...
But is that the whole truth? I cant imagine all this development comes just from donations?
 
Hi, As far as LibreOffice goes it's basically funded by donations. Here some information on their page.

Who are we? | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

About us, The Document Foundation, LibreOffice, Community, Governance
www.libreoffice.org www.libreoffice.org
Click to expand...
As far as Thunderbird goes here is what they say:

Our Community​

There is a passionate team of volunteers involved in developing Thunderbird and assisting its users who would welcome your involvement. Check out our Get Involved page to learn how you can participate on the Thunderbird team. We also have paid staff working full-time on Thunderbird, funded by donations from our users. If you’re curious about who is working on Thunderbird, check out the list of our core contributors.

Thunderbird Council​

The Thunderbird project is governed by seven councilors, elected by the Thunderbird community’s active contributors. You can see the current elected Thunderbird Council members on the Thunderbird wiki.
Click to expand...
Bottom line is they both rely on Volunteer developers who do their work for little or no pay.
 
A lot of open source software is donation based like said earlier, but i think software is often easy enough to make that proprietary developers will make free versions of things they know how to do for fun and bragging rights.

I've honestly thought the same thing as your Dad on numerous occasions, but the cool thing about FOSS is that the "how to make" part then becomes easier for developers.
 
Both of those have paid developers. Sort of...

In the case of Thunderbird, there are paid developers from the Mozilla Foundation. There are also volunteers. There are companies that also pay people to write code for Mozilla because they depend on the project internally.

In the case of LibreOffice, there are companies that rely on the software and they pay people to work on it. There are also volunteers. Their code comes from upstream, as they're a fork of OpenOffice. OpenOffice is an Apache project, owned and funded by Oracle.

FOSS is funded in a variety of ways and you'll need to check each project.

Many are labors of love,almost/entirely unfunded - and regretfully so 'cause the author's darned tired of working on it and getting nothing but crap thrown at them by ingrates.

In short, it's kinda complicated, it's inconsistent, and it doesn't always reward good work.
 
Well, you could always tell him that Thunderbird and LibreOffice are free principally becasue the world is fed to the teeth with paying inflated prices for software.

Do they work?........YES
Are they supported?......YES

Are they going to disappear anytime soon/.........NO

How are they paid?.....with the very milk of human kindness. it is a big, big world out there, and the number of people who give of their time and of their money, freely, is astonishing.

The fact that I have been using both of these apps/programs for many years is fair proof of that.

I am likely older than your Dad, and I am extremely wary of what I use. I absolutely make certain that the free tag is exactly that....Free...in the truest sense of that word.

Does it have drawbacks of any kind ?....everything does.....everything.
I, for one, am quite ok with figuring out/putting up with anything that doesn't quite suit me.

I would much rather do that than put up with crap from Msoft & Co which does not guarantee me any more support (and quite often a whole lot less) than the Free alternatives.....eg, Thunderbird Mail, LibreOffice, and the dozens and dozens of others.......not to mention Linux itself....which is the greatest gift of them all.

Perhaps a good read for him: https://www.linuxmint.com/
 
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