Paying for FOSS
Pykota is a project that comes rather handy in my line of work, especially when I need to integrate print accounting for our clients. It has an active mailing list and the devel lead… Jerome Alet is very, very responsive and helpful. Of late I’ve been spec-ing a GUI project to Joe users interact with a pykota-based print system.
So while reading through the pykota wiki, i decided to pay the one-time USD 25 fee towards an unlimited site access. Did I really need the “extras” and value-adds that paying entitled me.The answer to that is both “yes” and “no“. “No” because me and team can easily work around the code, “yes” because why should I really waste our time to do things that Jerome and his team are already offering as a complete package. But yes, I did mentally debate if paying the money for something i got nearly completely for gratis, was worth it.
USD 25 amount to just a little less than INR 1100 (as the US$ is at one of its lowest levels in many years). It’s a small amount, but nonetheless it feels good to support a useful project. Incidentally, $25 is the same amount I pay annually at the moment for my Flickr Account without an apparent second thought 