Nothing is free... Including free software(freeware)...

Have you heard of the saying "Nothing in life is free?" Yes, I would have to agree to that. And I mean it. That includes free software, which we also call freeware.

The company I work for has recently released a piece of software for free on the public market. I am one of the developers who are responsible for it. Someone might call it a piece of shit just because it doesn't work on his/her device. But Please be careful with your words.

I was very surprised with the fact that many people take free software for granted. But what does free really mean for free software(freeware)? It could mean a lot of things. But for free software, one thing is for sure. It means that the developers are willing to share the effort of making what they thought would be nice to have with the public. This isn't entirely true, because freeware could be distributed as for means for advertising and marketing. However, not everything is about money, isn't it?

One thing that irritates me in today's society is that many things are thought to be related to making profit. But for software developers, we are passionate about what we do and what we create. So deep inside our heart, there is something more important than just making a fortune out of our creation. We simply want to make our life better. Enriching our quality of life. It would be so sad if all we do is make money out of what we create and nobody benefits from it. I mean two things in different aspects when using the word "benefit." Firstly in the service(feature) stand point of view and secondly the usability(fun and easy to use) point of view.

In rare cases where there is no competition in the market for some product, people would have to use the product without much choice. The product may evolve in terms of the features it provides, but usually that's about it. Making a good product that works is important. On the other hand making it available to a wider range of people is something that we also want. So, where am I going?

We, as developers(at least my colleagues) are trying to achieve both goals. We want our product to be providing flawless service of what it was intended for and wish that many people would enjoy using our product. This is our teams position in working on the software we have released which might be a bit different from the company's position. What I am trying to say here is that developers have somewhat pure passion about how to make a product aside from what the employers would want them to do.

Currently, we are getting a lot of emails and feedback from our users from Facebook. While many of them are compliments and encouragements for making our product freely available, some feedbacks are quite harsh to take personally. As I said before, some would tell us our product sucks because it wouldn't work on a specific device. Some would brag about not having the desired feature. While we are working on optimization and fixing reported bugs, some people would whine about some features that were requested not added to minor updates. This is the point where I thought people take freeware for granted. People must understand that the product must be built on a firmly workable product in order to benefit the users. I tell you again that we are going for both goals. We are also eager to implement the requested features. But first things first. And it isn't easy to get the first step right in the first place either.

For a team of 6, it is not only hard to make things work perfectly for every case given the time and resource. Also it is really hard to cope with all the requests made by the users from diverse cultures. I doubt that this would be an easy task even for a large team too. I understand our product may put some people into frustrating situations, but I would like them to know that we are trying our best. As far as I know, my teammates are passionate about our work trying to satisfy all the users. So we appreciate the attention we are getting and the feedbacks, error reports, and etc. But I wish that some users could be more generous.

The reason why we released it for free at the moment is to share our effort and to make it better by receiving feedbacks from our users. Since we work for profit, we might have a commercial release someday. However, at the same time, we also have plans to keep the free version with limited features for the sake of humanity. We want to influence people's life in a good way with our product. That's why freeware isn't free. It comes with commitment to contribute in improving the software. It doesn't matter much to us whether you contribute directly by sending us feedback or indirectly by deciding whether or not to use it. I consider all those actions as contribution.

So here is what I want to say... Please don't take free software for granted. It wouldn't exist without our passion nor your support. My opinion about free software and the user's reaction might seem naive for a person with a profession in the software industry, but I have to admit that I am young and want to be treated more generously with patience. : ) And I bet this is how all software developers would like to be treated especially if what they are working on is for FREE!!!

But I still do appreciate the attention and your effort in trying out our product although you might turn out to be a hater. Haters are still a necessity... 

* My opinion about our product and the users may differ from the company's.