Actually, I am a bioinformatics programmer, and to date I have given away
my programs away for free. The main reason I give them away for free is fairly simple: the market of genetics researchers potentially interested in buying them is too small,
so I would not make that much money trying to sell them.
To muddy the waters further, vendors who make gel analysis software that is involved in generating the basic data of genomics and proteomics charge huge amounts of money, that labs regularly pay, because some types (and venues) of biomedical research are well-funded. The issue of software cost is a complex one, involving both business and non-business decisions (and especially the latter in one-person operations).
-- Curtis Clark http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ Mockingbird Font Works http://www.mockfont.com/
