If someone suggests a tool that costs $1k/yr over a free tool that costs $5k/year in extra work, I’m going to die on the free tool hill. Because the $1k/yr tool will disappear when the company goes defunct, or it won’t interoperate with something else and there is no way of fixing it. Or it can’t migrate to the next tool. Or we need to upgrade to an enterprise license because we become 21 developers instead of 20. Or they just bump
the cost to
$20k for whatever reason. Or the tool won’t work on CI servers because it only works after entering a key in an attended install (yes this is still a thing).
Free tools have a predictable and stable cost.
I have probably been burned more times from free tools over the years, but the scars aren’t as deep. It’s just a shrug and hoping the other project works when the first doesn’t.
I think he means free as in open source, rather than free as in freeware. In which the worst case scenario is that you are stuck with the last open-source version, but at least you retain full control over your fork of the code and can add features and bug fixes as you see fit.
Then I'll find the fork and use that. We have already done that a few times. There is a reason we audit all the licenses of open source software we have.
Free tools have a predictable and stable cost.
I have probably been burned more times from free tools over the years, but the scars aren’t as deep. It’s just a shrug and hoping the other project works when the first doesn’t.