Fragility of Free

Ben Brooks explains why free software (free as in beer) is not always a good thing. First, revenue gives creators a good reason to maintain, improve, and nurture their software. Second, customers are hard to ignore – especially when they’re paying you.

When Twitter introduced the Quickbar — more affectionately known as #dickbar — users revolted at the forced interjection of promoted trends and an object that ‘messed’ with the view in the user’s content stream. Had Twitter for iPhone still been Tweetie and cost the users money I can assure you that Brichter would have removed the Quickbar immediately and would have been very communicative with users about that.