Because ubuntu is free, how much would you pay for it?

[professor_chaos]

I was a little suprised at the recent threads response, "if ubuntu wasn't free". I agree, If it wasn't free I probably would pay anything.

But now that I have had time to use it, I think it's worth quite a bit, and would now pay (donate) for this great product.

So is it that paying for linux is not the GNU way. Or is it that some consider that they pay by contributing intellectually to the project and money shouldn't ever enter the picture.

[matthew]

Free as in freedom. No compromise.

I like free as in beer, too. With all the great no-cost options with Linux it would be hard to get me to try one that charged...hence I've not tried a few of the big ones and have no plans to (i.e. Linspire, etc.)

I do contribute by helping friends and the community in other ways, though, like the forums, the wiki, and lots face to face locally.

[poofyhairguy]

I pay by answering at least a thousand questions in the beginner forum.

[charlieg]

I pay by helping a few people in the forums. Not quite to the degree of poofyhairguy, but then again I just don't have that kind of spare time.

[Ride Jib]

1. I was drawn to Linux by the lack of cost ($$). I happened across Ubuntu and liked it. If they were to charge money, I would simply find another distro.

2. I do, also, try to answer questions on here, as well as on #ubuntu whenever I have some spare time.

#1 outweighs #2 so I voted option #3

[bored2k]

I pay by answering at least a thousand questions.
Word.

[Lord Illidan]

Plus sometimes I have so many issues with distros, for example, Fedora 2, 3 & Mandrake not detecting my sound card, Suse 9.2 a hell to work with my graphics card, that I don't want to pay money for Linux, then I find out that it doesn't work..

Ok, Ubuntu works, now that I have tried it, but had I been a new user, I wouldn't have bought it, at least until I made sure that 99% of people who used it found it good enough...

Which is why Linspire is not getting their hands on my money.

[weasel fierce]

I pay by asking poofyhairguy a 1000 questions in the beginner section... :)

[GreyFox503]

I pay by answering at least a thousand questions in the beginner forum.

Very good point.

Of course, being free (monetary wise) is a big advantage of many distros, however, that's not the only reason I use Ubuntu. In a hypothetical world, if Ubuntu cost $300 (same as winXP) I would still choose it because of the underlying principles of free software. When I finally deleted my NTFS windows partition, it was like a weight lifted from me.

Ok, so that's a little sappy and you might be rolling your eyes.

I am considering donating to the developers a little to show gratitude, but haven't yet.