Ask HN: Why are command line tools free (as in beer)? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are command line tools free (as in beer)?

3 pointsdgellow17 comments

I have this thought since a few months, and I didn't find a conclusive answer yet: is there a market for non-free CLI tools?

My work depends so heavily on some command line tools such as jq, grep, httpie/curl, ... that I find it very surprising that I haven't ever seen a command line tool sold for a price. And I implemented enough of my own to know it's not trivial to have a great command line interface.

Three points I consider:

- it's clear that we get A LOT of value from CLI tools

- lot of people are willing to pay for GUI application

- a CLI is just an alternative interface to a GUI

Thus: why don't we pay for CLI applications?

To clarify:

- I'm not talking about donating to support a project

- I'm not saying that we should pay, I would like to understand why we don't have similar markets for CLI than we have for GUI, SaaS, etc

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Because the target audience - developers, system administrator and similarly technically skilled users - by default usually expect software to be free as in beer.

For example, I've talked to quite a few software developers who will gladly admit that IntelliJ IDEA (which comes at merely €499) makes them much more productive but who at the same time keep using Eclipse because it's free.

Jenkins is another example. Maintaining a Jenkins install can be a real headache. Its user experience is, let's say, less than stellar. Still, it's widely used because it's "free".

It's both ironic and unfortunate that often those people who make a living creating software seem to be the most averse to paying for software.

> It's both ironic and unfortunate that often those people who make a living creating software seem to be the most averse to paying for software.

That's probably true with most if not all professions. I imagine car mechanics are also adverse to sending their car to a mechanic, for example.

Yes, but they usually aren't averse to buying proper tools if those help them do their job more efficiently.

Being able to make or modify the tools is not part of their profession, but it is in our case.

Honestly though, I think you're confusing the issue. At least for me and I imagine some others, the problem is not so much with paying but with being able to completely own the tools by having their source. It gives a guarantee that with enough effort we'll always be able to bend the tool to our will. The fact that open source is typically free is just because it's generally hard to prevent skilled computer users from pirating software which source they have complete control over. So, it being free as in beer is just a side effect of the really valuable fact that it's free as in freedom.

Wanting to completely own one's tools is good on principle.

However, with tools such as an IDE that remains largely theoretical because very few users will actually change core IDE code.

Therefore, for all practical intents and purposes it doesn't really make a difference if you own Eclipse or the IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition or a perpetual licence for the IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition.

Intellij IDEA CE can be used commercially.

TBF, the paid features are not that exciting.. Most of it belongs to the terminal anyways. The free features cover pretty much all corners (Java).

It depends. If you're not just working with pure Java but for example frameworks such as Spring or other languages such as JavaScript, too, you pretty much have to use either the Ultimate Edition or environment-specific editions such as WebStorm.

Language and framework support is not what sets IntelliJ IDEA apart but working with frameworks and languages without IDE support can quickly become quite tedious to the point that it offsets the benefits provided by IntelliJ IDEA over other IDEs.

Paid CLI application has to beat free ones, and that's not happening.

Either the paid CLI applications runs locally, in which case it faces decades of experience and intelligence in the commonly used tools created by present and past computer scientists and professionals, which are all free.

Or it is the front of something much bigger, like AWS CLI, the cli itself is free but the services behind it is not, but that narrowly defined "cli-application" is still free.

> Is there a market for non-free CLI tools?

Yes, the most popular example I know of is FileBot[0]. It used to be free; it went commercial a short while back. Many people do indeed pay the yearly (or lifetime) subscription for it.

[0]: https://www.filebot.net/

Isn’t FileBot a graphical application?

It has a GUI and a CLI[0] option. You need a license to use either.

[0]: https://www.filebot.net/cli.html

File compressors were non-free some time ago (Zip, ARJ, etc.) or at least shareware. I guess UPX executable compressor was also non-free.

Other non-free category are media encoders/decoders (with patents behind).

The other cmdline tool I remember it's non-free is tarsnap because there is a service behind.

Having a price, even $ 0.1, puts a barrier to trying, automating and deploying software on many servers.

I'm pretty sure there are CLI tools that cost.

Let me give you two: Perforce + Dotfuscator. They have their GUI, but also CLI applications - and you have to pay for them.

In my view, they should probably come after the (or, in companion to) GUI app -- so when you need to automate a task in an application you already use, in that case, it makes total sense

There used to be - I remember paying for 4DOS back in the day, also there was a suite of unix like command line tools for dos (and windows) that was for sale, forget the name now.

Did you buy the binary, or a license key that you have to activate somehow? Or something else?

I think it might have been shareware - or maybe nagware.

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