XPost: comp.lang.c++   
   From: david.brown@hesbynett.no   
      
   On 11/02/2026 06:57, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   > On Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:57:21 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:   
   >   
   >> It is very hard to compete with the price of free.   
   >   
   > Tell that to the sellers of bottled water. ;)   
   >   
   >> DWSIM has a very loyal following and many of them participate in the   
   >> programming of new features.   
   >   
   > That’s the way Open Source should be. Too often we see people   
   > complaining that some app doesn’t have features that they desperately   
   > need, so they have to go back to paid proprietary software. Completely   
   > overlooking the fact that, if they put some of that money they would   
   > pay the proprietary software vendor towards sponsoring the development   
   > of some of the features they need, the result would benefit everybody.   
      
   But would that be an advantage to that user?  Benefiting everybody means   
   benefiting your competition as well.  I have no idea how competitive or   
   cooperative the users of chemical simulators is, but it is not always   
   the case that "benefits everyone" is a win for the person or company   
   stumping up the cash.  In many markets, there is room for pure   
   closed-source commercial software, pure free and open source software,   
   and many combinations in between.  Simplistic "everybody wins" arguments   
   are rarely applicable.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)