TANSTAFS

There Ain't No Such Thing As Free Software.

Let's think about that. Certainly Ad-Supported software is not free. The "free" version of Eudora I am forced to use for now is not free because I get little ads appearing inside its real estate. And certainly a screen saver or smiley face library are not free because they come with surreptitious downloads of adware that eat up your resources and make your computing live miserable.

But what about open-source software? How does that fit into the equation? I use FireFox freely and I can discern no cost. There is tremendous benefit but no cost. How does that work? What would Robert Heinlein say about that?

Time to do some research....