~kanarip

Free software is often mistaken for gratis software, as "free" in English means both freedom as well as gratis.

It isn't actually gratis as Free Software concerns freedom, not price, and even though you might be able to obtain, use, study, modify and re-distribute inherently rendering Free Software also gratis, here's a couple of reasons why Free Software is never gratis.

Do you want help?

If you like to have a little support, consultancy and maybe some training or certification, you are going to need to go to a supplier for either of these things. Obviously, the supplier will not charge you zero price for their services.

Do it all by yourself?

If you do it all yourself; research, development, support, training, etc., you are creating overhead that costs money.

Additionally, some of these things may have been taken care of already. These are things you're not actually supposed to repeat and re-invent yourself, as someone might have researched and developed stuff already whether it be new applications or patches or extensions to an existing one (and shared it). Other things could be taken care of outside the organisation much more effectively and much more efficiently, such as training and certification

Do it yourself?

Instead of a supported Enterprise Linux grade of distributions, you'd be using something unsupported, maybe even unstable, without any particular organisation that is backing you up and would ultimately be accountable for the support the rest of your organisation requires. This means that probably, your issues are experienced somewhere else as well. You may find solutions to your problems here and there, if you look around, and then there's those problems that nobody seems to be able to resolve just like that and which are actually bugs (in either code or user-friendliness). If you solve them, someone out there could benefit from your solution whether it be a workaround or actual patch. You might care enough to take some time and post something online somewhere.

Digging through potential causes, logging bugs and thinking of solutions, maybe coming up with a workaround or patch all by yourself is a good thing, don't get me wrong. But it does cost something, somewhere, and thus renders free software not gratis.

If you choose to be a good FOSS citizen and share your workarounds and patches and maybe even have them accepted upstream so that the problem/challenge is resolved permanently -which, again, is a very good thing to do- well hey guess what, there's tremendous value but again it does cost something, somewhere.

Participate or lose

If you choose to just consume and not care at all, much like M$ customers, then know that you are not getting the most value out of the product. Regardless of whether you are paying for support/training, you've been given the opportunity to have your voice be heard by those working on or with the same product, the next generation of the product, and by passively consuming, you let that opportunity pass. As such, it actually does cost you money if you do not participate and have your exact needs and expectations be met now or in the future.