Commercial vs. Freeware

[Sparky]

Hypothesis:
For every commercial application there are at least two freeware alternatives.

Discuss!

Examples

- Photoshop has The GIMP, Seashore...

[Pielogist]

kinda true IMO, cause freeware are generally quick and easy to make, as people wouldn't spend a lot of time in to do something that doesn't pay off.

[draconic74]

Ill put in mine...
From:
Rhino 3D, Maya, 3ds Max
you get:
Blender 3D, SketchUp


So: After Effects, Final Cut Pro
Go. -_-

[Excend]

I'd like to point out that the commercial apps are in fact better than the freeware ones.

[nil]

That's not always true. Adium has always been better than its commercial alternatives which have died off. Something similar can be said about IRC clients too at this current state. Quicksilver was considered to be better than even spotlight and commercial alternatives like Launch Bar at the time. Something similar, I think, can be said about virtual desktop apps before Spaces existed. In many cases, there's no competition against freeware apps even (eg, bit torrent apps).

[edit]: So I lie. There are commercial torrent apps, which I'm sure, are not as good as the current popular freeware one.

[draconic74]

How about Snapz Pro X? Any freeware for that one that is actually good? And yeah. IRC, IM, and P2P freeware apps are far superior. Same thing can't be said about the iPod/iPhone IM and IRC apps though...

[nil]

Just going to look at the types of apps I have on my computer and make a list:

Hex editors: All freeware pretty much.
AIM: All freeware pretty much.
Web browsers: iCab is a note-able shareware one, but it's not one of the big ones (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera) that are all free. And there's other free web browsers (Camino, Shiira) too.
Modeling: Mostly all except Blender are commercial and expensive, though Blender has a bad learning curve. I suppose wings 3d is free too. Other commercial ones are cheetah3D (not extremely expensive) and like Maya (probably a lot more expensive).
IRC: Lots are free, many CLI ones tend to be better than GUI ones actually. Linkinus is a commercial GUI one, which I've liked better than colloquy and other GUI alternatives actually.
Coding IDE's: Mostly all are free nowadays. No competition.
Coding editors: Some good ones cost money (eg, TextMate). Some good ones are also free (eg, TextWrangler).
Graphic editors: Photoshop and pixelmator are commercial. The GIMP is free, along with other minor ones such as Seashore.
Office suites: MS Office or iWork are commercial.. Then there's openoffice..
Video players: VLC, MPlayer are free. Quicktime Pro isn't [and you need that to do something as basic as fullscreen].
Running windows software: Commercial ones like Parallels, vmware fusion, crossover. Freeware ones are like Qemu and Virtual Box which in my experience both suck [though I never tried the commercial ones].
FTP: Transmit is commercial, Cyberduck is freeware; Transmit is better in my experience.

Video recording: Quicktime X can do this now, but it sucks. Snapz has cheaper alternatives that give it a run for its money (ishowu, screenflick) and also screenflow which is more expensive. Freeware ones don't seem to exist very well here.

[draconic74]

Coding IDE's: Mostly all are free nowadays. No competition.

Except Xcode, sorta. Xcode is weird, because you have to join Apple's Developer Connection, which is $99/year. But then you get lots and lots of extra stuff, like new OSX and iOS builds. But then... If you have an install disk, it is in there as well, but its just the developers tools (Xcode being one of them). I spent a long time trying to find some free version of Xcode- even an old, outdated one- but eventually got ahold of my dad's 10.5 disk. I have to say, there is an impressive array of programs, most of which I know nothing on how they work.

But it is really, really fun messing around with the Quartz Composer application. Heh heh...

[nil]

Xcode is free. Registration to Apple Developer Connection is also free. Sure, you can pay extra money if you want extra support or want to test/deploy applications on the IOS, but that's different.

I certainly don't pay anything for using Xcode and it can easily be downloaded online.

Finding an outdated version of Xcode is going to be much harder, probably, than finding the latest version. And I have to say it's completely silly to even bother with using old versions of Xcode, or for that matter, developing on older OS versions.

[002]

And I have to say it's completely silly to even bother with using old versions of Xcode, or for that matter, developing on older OS versions.

I agree with that statement. It's really pointless using an old version of Xcode. Also, people still use Tiger on Intel Macintoshes. They have the specifications to upgrade and it isn't too expensive. Some people complain because something only works on Leopard and Snow Leopard instead of their older Mac OS X installation. If you really want to run it so badly, upgrade.



Back to this topic:

Commercial is usually better because many people are probably developing. This means faster response for consumers. It's also usually made for designing products to use in a business, etc.
Freeware is more commonly downloaded because not very many people want to buy commercialware. Some freeware are also used for designing products for business, etc.

Commercial can be competitive and so can freeware. For example:
Commercial and Commercial: Mac OS X vs. Windows
Commercial and Freeware: Photoshop vs. Gimp
Freeware and Freeware: Linux vs. Linux | There are multiple variations (distros) of Linux.
Multiple: Mac OS X vs. Windows vs. Linux vs. Linux

Some people get Windows instead of Mac. Most of you already know why. Some of you who picked the iMac and didn't get a computer with Windows probably believed that Windows is really not as good as Mac OS X. Some people who picked WIndows over Mac OS X probably believed that Windows is either better than Mac or has more software. It's also the same with some people picking a Linux distro (such as Ubuntu) over Windows/Mac.

There's a lot more that can be discussed.