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OK, consider the browser market: are there any browsers that cost money? If so, I've not heard of it. From the beginning, Netscape Corporation, Microsoft, Opera and Apple gave away their browsers for free. That is because by the early 1990s it was well understood (at least by Silicon Valley execs) that what is important is grabbing mind share, and charging any amount of money would severely curtain the ability to do that.

In the 1970s when Unix started being distributed outside of Bell Labs, tech company execs did not yet understand that. The owners of Unix adopted a superior strategy to ensure survival of Unix by accident (namely, by being sued -- IIRC in the 1950s -- by the US Justice Department on anti-trust grounds).



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