Free Fridays

Free Fridays is a series of articles that looks at free software available for your PC or Mac.

By free, we mean that you don’t have to pay for it, not that it’s open source.

You might think that software you don’t have to pay for can’t be as good as commercially available, shrink-wrapped software But free software can be just as good if not better than software sold using the traditional business model.

So why do people give software away for free?

There are a number of different reasons and business models for free software, of which the main four are:

• build a customer base who will want your other products
• provide a free licence for individuals and non-profits, but a commercial licence for companies.
• provide the software for free and make money in training and support or other services
• labour of love/community project

You can read the complete series here or subscribe via our feed for immediate notification of new articles