The Truth About ‘Free’ Software for Nonprofits

Software vendors have very legitimate reasons for placing these restrictions on their products: liability concerns, technical support and, of course, profit. Software vendors do not want to be held responsible for any damage that might result from misuse of their products, so they specifically state what the intended use is and tell you that you’re on your own if you use it for anything else. Technical support is extremely difficult to begin with, and made immeasurably more complicated if folks are allowed to tinker around with the inner workings of a program. And of course sharing copies of commercial software denies the vendor profit from sales.