Recently, while listening to the Salmagundy radio program (Simon Pontin, WXXI, Rochester, New York – Via temporary stream), I was reminded of Voltaire.  Yes, that one – Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, who wrote, among other things,  “Candide or Optimism”.  The reminder came in the form of the Finale of the musical, “Candide”, by Leonard Bernstein and Richard Wilbur.  But the first thought that came to my mind was the basic premise of the satire: “The Best of All Possible Worlds”.

I have a copy of the translation of the book in my possession.  Published in 1946, the book is listed as costing 50 cents.  Barnes and Nobel sells the book, now for $9.00.  Now, right there, one wonders, at that rate of inflation, how could this be the best of all possible worlds?  It is rather obvious that publishers are charging whatever they think they can get for literary works (of whatever literary ability and quality).  Nor is this rate of inflation restricted to publishers.  Food, rent, insurance . . . I’m sure you can add to the list, yourselves.  Each competing to charge as much as they can get away with while providing as little as they can get away with.

Software is no different.  Except that it’s got a bit of a twist.  First, you buy a copy of the software for a certain price.  Maybe it’s a game.  Maybe it’s an operating system.  Maybe it’s an productivity suite.  Never mind, it really doesn’t matter what type of software it was, because next year you’ll have to pay again to upgrade or even pay all over again to get the latest version, because (of course) everybody else will be using it and you MUST keep up.  It turns out that you’re not BUYING a copy of the software, you’re only RENTING it.  And you will be expected to continue renting it, because (of course) the previous version will no longer be supported.  Now, it wouldn’t be so bad if the software was perfect:  no bugs – no security holes – did what you wanted/needed it to do.  But that isn’t the case, is it.  Even the best software is constantly being fixed to solve programming mistakes, upgraded to add/change functionality, modified to fill security holes.  To charge for updates and upgrades for such is only “The Best of All Possible Worlds” for the commercial entities collecting the money for such software.

Oh, I forgot something.  Support.  Have you priced support for your software?  What happens if you can’t get it to install, or if you can’t find where to configure a particular element to do what you need to do?  That’s added to the price of your software, you say?  You obviously haven’t tried to get such support, lately, have you.  You’ll be told that you must have a service contract for that.

Fortunately, not all software follows that model.  There is software that is free, as in the “free beer” sense.  Software that doesn’t cost any money.  Not only that, but the updates and upgrades are also free.  But what about support?  Well, you can also get free support for it, if you’re willing to be patient.  Or you can get paid support, if you’re running production machines (computers that HAVE to stay on line and working because of the business you’re in).  And, to add to that, you can take it apart and look at the code – even change the code to do the things you need it to do.  That’s what FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) is all about.  And that’s what Ubuntu supplies in its distributions.  So, for those who use the software, this is “The Best of All Possible Worlds”, after all.