This document is a guide to how to pay for your Free Software. A lot of people have put in a lot of time to make your high quality Free Software. They chose to licence it so that you can modify and redistribute it. They often, although not always, gave you the program without requiring that you pay any money for it.

Despite being cheap to obtain the development, testing, and maintenance of the Free Software you use is not negligible in cost, far from it. But unlike proprietary, commercial software, there are ways you can pay for Free Software that aren't money.

You can pay for Free Software by contributing time, money or resources to Free Software projects.

Many of the developers of exisiting Free Software have sufficient incentive to develop Free Software. Their reasons are various. Some developers believe strongly in freely shared intellectual property. Others simply enjoy the process of creating software.

This document, however, is aimed at users of Free Software who do not find either shared intellectual property or the creation of software itself a compelling reason to participate in Free Software development. These users appreciate existing Free Software for its quality, the ability to modify it, its support communities, or its availability compared to proprietry alternatives.

Some of these users are not confident in their ability to contribute. The most common reason these users give is that they can't program, or can't program well, but others include not knowing how to become involved in the community, or not knowing how to contribute to a well established project. I hope that they will find some alternative ways to contribute in this HOWTO.

Some of these users do not feel their contribution is necessary. They believe that the Free Software community is mature enough that it can meet their demands for quality Free Software without their involvement. I hope that this HOWTO will convince them both that their involvement will make Free Software better, and that their involvement is likely to give others incentive to help them with their particular needs.

Free software is Free, right?

Here's what's free about it: redistribution and modification. You are free to redistribute the program. You are free to modify the source code and distribute your modifications, at least under the original licence, and sometimes under other licences too.

Here's what's not free about it: development, testing, maintenance and distribution. Someone's time, or money, or bandwidth, or hard-drive space was consumed.

But, it's effectively Free, right?

Free software is often, but not always, distributed or available free of a purchase price. This unfortunately leads some users to believe that it was developed at no cost to the developers, and that modifications come at no cost to the developers.

There are several incentives to contribute to Free Software. For people who don't find the community or the work sufficient incentive, a considerable incentive is producing better software. Many users of Free Software, whether individuals or corporate users, have needs that are not met by existing Free Software. Often, these needs are not met by any available software at all.

Inspiring proprietry software developers to develop a product or add a feature is fairly straightforward. The incentive for proprietry software developers is money, and if they are persuaded that the prospect of making money outweighs development time and various risks, someone may well develop your software.

Inspiring Free Software developers is not so straightforward. Increased sales, or other monetary incentives may be possible. Alternatively they might need to be convinced that your feature or program sounds fun, that it is an intelligent way to do things, that it won't take much time or that you'll help.

Some Free Software users do not seem to realise that Free Software developers have no more obligation to their users to develop or support software than proprietry software developers have obligation for unpaid support or development. Demanding quality Free Software without helping build it is at best useless, at worst counterproductive.

I hope this HOWTO will illustrate that contributing to Free Software is the most likely way to get Free Software that meets your needs.