Why not freeware/open source?

Many people still believe that you can tell the value of something by the cost, so they naturally assume that if you pay for a program then it must be better. I have used a few freeware programs over the years, although they were few and far between. I have also used several distributions of Linux, which really demonstrate the value of many open source programs.

Asylum pretty much said what I was going to say. People are just used to paying money. If you tell someone that there are high quality products that are absolutely free, they will still be wary of using them. Oh, they may try them out and even like them, but when it comes down to it, they will still go purchase another product just because there is a name and a basic assumption associated with that product. It's now 2007, there are some ridiculously good open source projects out there, from operating systems to office suites. Actually, I think that every single mainstream product that comes out has a decent open source equivalent floating around somewhere.