Why are things supplied for free when they cost the supplier money or time?

This s a thread to discuss this and try and see motivations.
Why is this important ?
Because ,in business, I need to know the supplier and thier motivations, as freeware and other free things can be a carrier for things that are dangerous suck as viruses, trojans and other nasties.


Having a look at the excellent offer from Astahost I see two motivations, one that they are trying to encourage usage in an altruistic way , the other that there is an entry barrier in the number of posts that will encourage those who do not want to pass that barrier to pay the very low entry cost of $9.95 for a better service.

What other free items can you identify with different reasons for the offer?

Some I can think of are
Altruisim
Self Promotion
Company Promotion
Branding
Spoiler (of some other commercial software)
Competition between offerings
Promotion of alternatives
Any other motivations with examples

Thanks

things are free cause not everybody has alot of money

I wonder if that is true
There is a cost in having Internet Access, downloading, data charges etc.
Thinking about that is there a perception that "because I have paid for web access" there should be no charge for anything else".
Which is why subscrption news sites nre not comon I think

well seeing free I automaticly thought of Firefox, its a free program, yet it is also considered a quality program, why? Because it is free and open sourced (I'm a n00b in this open source stuff so this is all speculation/common sense)

because firefox is open sourced, it allows people from around the world who are good with certain things eg. programmers, gfx desingers etc to gather together to make this program better, consider the many useful plugins that Firefox has - Nuke Anything, mouse gesters

MIrcosoft has thousands of employees, probbaly some of the best of the best yet I did not see these things with IE why? because it isn't free, brilliant minds are kept out of the loop so it is not as good.

So some things are free because that way it can be a lot better.

That is true sometimes businesses offer free things as a way to get people "addicted" to their products, but, these "FREE" things usually have limits and the companies then offer a pay version of the same product so that the limits are removed.

However sometimes businesses offer free things because they are too small to compete with bigger companies if they charge a fee for the product. Take for example Firefox and Internet Explorer. If Firefox was not a free browser then I don't think that it would be as widely used as it is today, don't get me wrong I am not saying that Firefox is the most used web browser but I am saying that it would be used by less people if it was not free. That's because Microsoft is a BIG company that is very hard to compete with.

Then there are companies that believe that there should be at least one free version of a product for people who don't have the money to use. There are also some companies that believe that some products should be free and not charged a fee for.

What I am trying to say is that depending on what the product is and who the company is there are an unlimited number of answers to way some companies give away free stuff.

Things can be free because companies have sponsors who supply them with money. They sometimes offer a free product with a fraction of the possibilities as the program that they charge for. They do this so that if you like the free version then you'll be compelled to pay for the better version. They offer free stuff for advertising.

Other than Open Source projects, Free versions of software mostly for individual users. Those companies make their revenue from corporate licences.
By offering software free to people, they develop goodwill and are accredited with philanthrophy as well as provide a sample for corporates to look at.
Ex- AVG Antivirus

Some sofwares have been developed by individual/small groups of people and in that case people distribute it free and ask ppl to donate to their site.
Ex- Easycleaner and spybot

Some companies provide free services and generate revenue from ads hosted on their websites or in their software.
Ex (ad in service) - Gmail, google, hotmail
Ex (ad on program) - Opera Webbrowser

Note: The open source movement has different ideals and motivation.

* People like Bill Gates (aka satan) charge 3rd world countries abt 150$ for xp home but sell it to US university students at 10$.
M$ is now releasing 'XP Starter Edition' in Asia for us to waste our money on.

A lot of 'free' software is crap. If it is, that's the reason that it's free. I'm not saying this is all true, but many programs are just too buggy, inadequate, and hard to use to charge money for. This isn't true for everything of course, look at firefox, linux, and the eclipse project. All I'm saying is that sometimes, it's just not useful enough to chagre money for.

oh yeah, and to the guy who posted above me. Most universities in the US that I know people from and the one I'm currently attending give Windows XP Home Edition away.

Problem is separating "bundled" from "free"
I bet the course fees would be some $100 less if they were not giving away "free' academic XP

The main intention was helping out with those who really got talent and wanted resources to show it.. We proved that when we lost our Google ads which are the highest paying in industry and we are still alive..(most others close down as soon as google ads are suspended.. )

Ok, Our partner company Computinghost.com fuels us for this hosting.
The ads help too.. You can say, they help us a lot. However, they are not a source of guaranteed income..

We have many people shifting to paid hosting at computinghost.com not for the sake of quality or anything. but mostly because they want to help

Then, We attract a large amount of people from search engines.. We get free advertising for those audiences.

Inshort, we are able to do free marketting.

Then, Since our members become aware of our services and also our paid hosting service, We have seen cases where some of our clients are referred by free hosting members. ( Marketting by Word of mouth is a very Strong tool )

Whatever you might consider, but I am proud to provide HIGH QUALITY PAID service which costs more than $7 a month (other competitors) for FREE!