So, you’re in charge of a botanical garden, and obviously you always have to cope with your limited budget, and all of a sudden some project is at hand, you get several thousand dollar for you to invest in software for handling your collection. Well, not exactly just in software, but in that famous commercial software package you never could afford.

A once in lifetime opportunity, isn’t it?

What if I came here with reasons to refuse?

No, I’ve not gone crazy, let us consider together.

freedom a meditated decision ←:→ against money considerations dependency
   
  Money became available (State, EU, USA)
freedom Gardens come together and agree on a common project.
dependency Gardens compete for the prize.
   
  We bought a software
freedom More precisely, you invested money in a software, and this stays property of the community. The sofware comes “as is”, but you have the right to enhance, customize, and share.
dependency More precisely, you gave money to a private company. You have a limited right to use the software. The software comes “as is”, and you may pay for assistance when needed.
   
  We have an idea and it’s not in the software and we have budget to implement it
freedom Together with other gardens we enhance the software and we share it.
dependency Each garden explains to the exclusive copyright holder their needs, and the software house might implment it, and you may pay them for implementing what you explained, gratis.
   
  There’s a new version of the software
freedom I update my installation.
dependency Let’s see if there’s any money to buy it.
   
  The copyright holder disappears
freedom The license allows the community to continue maintaining the software.
dependency That’s unfortunate. What now. Migrate to something else, some day.
   
  But they’re giving me money to spend
freedom Without that money, you download a free software, and you own what you have.
dependency With that money, you buy a license, you are back to being without money, and you’re using something you will never own and which will keep costing you money.
   
  It’s a professional product we’re talking about
freedom GNU/Linux, free software, was in 2016 in use on 498 of the world’s top 500 computer. The remaining two (AIX) got out of the list the following year.
dependency “Since November 2015, no computer on the [500] list runs Windows”. What I mean to say, commercial software, that’s not the same as professional software.
   
  Worth considering…
freedom Android es Linux, iOS and OSX are both unix.
dependency Windows Phone was dismissed on October 9th, 2017.
   
  But I do not plan to move to Linux
freedom Who’s suggesting that. We work on GNU/Linux, we develop on it, but Ghini is designed to run equally well on OSX and Windows, and you may decide what database you prefer.
dependency … your commercial option, how much freedom does it give you?