The biggest reason for “free” software is that there is no licensing issues.
I am a Configuration Manager and when we have commercial software, I have to track licensing. Some programs are licensed per machine. You replace the machine, and you need a new license. That means paperwork. Have a 100 people in a group, and you need a full time person filling out the license changing paperwork. Software licensed per user account is almost just as bad. Every time one person leaves, and another comes, I’ve got to change the licensing info.
Then there’s licenses like Perforce that allow people to download, but only will grant x number of accounts. Not too bad, except I’m not usually told when people leave, only when we need new accounts. I run out of license, and then I have to determine who’s gone and who’s still around.
Then, there’s figuring out how many licenses you really need. I get into arguments all the time with various departments. Why do I need 140 licenses when there are only 130 developers? (Because our consultants also need access to it too). Why are we ordering 20 more licenses. Didn’t we purchase 100 three months ago? (We hired another 20 developers.) Why didn’t we originally order 120 license? (I did, but then management decided that we didn’t need that many.)
And, that doesn’t even cover vendor issues where I am suppose to order from a particular vendor instead of directly from the company. Most of the time, the vendor doesn’t stock development or non-Microsoft software, and I’ll have to work out a special deal. Then, there’s management questions. Why are we getting X which costs $1000 per user instead of Y which costs only $950 per user? Can you cost justify the purchase?
One time, we decided upon Perforce as our version control system. We ordered the licenses and waited over three months while our vendor and our purchasing department tried to figure out what to do. Everyday, I would call purchasing, get the latest Purchase Order number, call the vendor, ask why the purchase didn’t go through, call purchasing and get the information the vendor wants, call the vendor and give them the info. Call Perforce and get their status, call the vendor and tell them what Perforce told me.
Later on, our IT department decided to change all the licensing used in Perforce in order to centralize it. Another 3 months of hell as we argued and bickered about the details. I like Perforce a lot, but by that time, I wished we simply decided upon Subversion just because it is free and open source.
That’s why we use 7zip instead of WinZip or PSpad instead of TextPad. It’s not these are superior programs. It’s simply easier to use the fre stuff than to deal with the licensing issues.