
Ask HN: Why are command line tools free (as in beer)? - dgellow
I have this thought since a few months, and I didn&#x27;t find a conclusive answer yet: is there a market for non-free CLI tools?<p>My work depends so heavily on some command line tools such as jq, grep, httpie&#x2F;curl, ... that I find it very surprising that I haven&#x27;t ever seen a command line tool sold for a price. And I implemented enough of my own to know it&#x27;s not trivial to have a great command line interface.<p>Three points I consider:<p>- it&#x27;s clear that we get A LOT of value from CLI tools<p>- lot of people are willing to pay for GUI application<p>- a CLI is just an alternative interface to a GUI<p>Thus: why don&#x27;t we pay for CLI applications?<p>To clarify:<p>- I&#x27;m not talking about donating to support a project<p>- I&#x27;m not saying that we <i></i>should<i></i> pay, I would like to understand why we don&#x27;t have similar markets for CLI than we have for GUI, SaaS, etc
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BjoernKW
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.

~~~
jolmg
> 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.

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

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jolmg
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.

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BjoernKW
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.

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Aperocky
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.

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Moeancurly
> 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/](https://www.filebot.net/)

~~~
dgellow
Isn’t FileBot a graphical application?

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

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

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

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photawe
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

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chadcmulligan
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.

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

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

