Re: Honourable mentions
Why pay when you can get something for free?
Because we thought it was a better product.
I liked it enough to buy a personal licence too. (I wish I could remember what it did that NP++ didn't at the time.. but it escapes me).
It's crazy, I know, but I thought 'Someone has put a lot of work into this, maybe they should be rewarded'. The cost wasn't great (I've eaten meals that cost more), so didn't bother me too much.
Also, Notepad++ is open-source which makes it "eternal."
By eternal you mean 'someone else will put in the effort to keep it going for me'?
Being open source doesn't imbue it with resistance to code rot. It may be open source, but you still have to be able to build and compile it, which requires effort as tooling and APIs change over time. None of that happens by magic.
How many people have been burned by software that stopped being supported or the company going bust? Never again for me.
All tools have a lifespan, be that a text editor or a toothbrush. I'm happy to pay for something if I like it, and if it exists for long enough that I feel I got my moneys worth I don't mind.
Companies that make a good product that people are happy to pay for don't tend to go bust as often. Open source software suffers from the same issue too, 'free' is great for the consumer, but unappreciated people tend to suffer burnout, then someone goes and sticks a back door in your compression library.