I'll gladly pay for software and here's why.
I never considered the hidden costs associated with the search.
I started my computing journey in the shareware era, first with ProDOS on an Apple IIc, then the MS-DOS years, so I'm no stranger to searching for free software to use on my computers. Most of my university time was spent with free software packages, other than those that the school supplied for us. After those years, to keep a particularly underpowered dual-core laptop going, I ran various Linux distributions, trying out new packages and software constantly to find things that fit my needs.
