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People often make the mistake of correlating price with inherent value. The wine or meal they paid more for was better than the lower cost one. Or the dearer car drives better. That, of course, is a cognitive bias (choice supportive bias) and is often false. And never moreso than in software. Every day I use software that costs me nothing to use that is far better in many respects than software other people pay thousands for each year... Admitting they're throwing $ away would be too hard.
@lightweight You get what you pay for. It happens that there is quite a bit of software out there for which you pay in things other than money.
@alilly I tend to disagree with that. I think in many cases, price (especially for goods about which the market is almost entirely ignorant, software being the main one in my experience) is used as a marketing tool, rather than as an indicator of quality. People, asked to chose between a bunch of things they don't understand and can't compare on actual merit, will use superficial measures like price as a proxy for quality.
@lightweight @alilly In order for the adage, "you get what you pay for", to work, you have to have a system that produces for value, rather than for enrichment. "Quality takes time" is the adage that used to drive "you get what you pay for", because in a capital society, "time equals money". FOSS has no "time equals money" equation, so the measure of quality is value. In non-FOSS, quality is a much lower driver, and capital factors drive usage. e.g., MS Windows.
@lwriemen @lightweight @alilly The use of surveillance advertising, DRM, in-app payments, etc present solely to make software more profitable comes to mind. FOSS doesn't bother with profitability like this, focusing our time on writing quality software!