Free and Paid Software

 Free Software

Free software are simply the software that are available to us for free of cost. They are also called Freeware. You can download them from the Internet for free. Their source code might or might not be open. A software being free does not compulsorily mean that it's source code must be open. As the main purpose of creating a software is earning money, keeping the source code open of any software will not be profitable to the developer. So the most of the software always come with a closed source code. 

Another question also arises with freewares, how do they earn? Answer is also simple. They earn by either showing the users ads, with in-app purchases or giving them an option to upgrade to a better package of that same software with some better features in exchange of some amount of money. The developers add ads in their software even though it gives not-so-good experience to the users. In-app purchases are also a method of earning for the developers. The developers also give an option to their users to upgrade their plan to better one. The better package may include new and added features or it might disable the ads. So, even if any apps are free, they are not totally free as they are taking something from you like your time by showing you ads or your data to show you personalized ads.

Paid Software

Paid software are the software that you download by paying some amount of money before downloading. The paid software are better in quality than the freewares and provide better features. Many paid software are better version of a certain software whose free version is also available. As these software are paid their source codes are always closed. Making their software's code open would just destroy their business module.  But many paid software are also being downloaded illegally through software piracy.

The earning method with the paid software is simple. You just have to pay before you download the software. You won't get to see any ads in these software. But sometimes there can be in-app purchases in software like games. The paid software comes with the all the possible features and the best user interface and GUI the developers can make. You might still not have the complete control over your data even in these software as the source codes is not open and you can't see where your data is going or where your data is being used.