i hope software gets to a point where "is this free?" stops being a normal question. when people see software online, they assume there's no business behind it. and they forget that behind every business are people trying to make a living. imagine walking up to a lemonade stand at a farmer's market and asking the owner, "is this free to drink?" they'd give you a confused look and probably laugh. so why do people expect software to be free? i think there are 4 reasons. and with AI making software cheaper to build than ever, it's only going to get more commoditized, and that expectation will keep growing. 1. the 2009 app store boom made free the standard during the 2009 app store boom, there were free apps everywhere. most indie developers didn't know how to run a business. their only real cost was their own time, so a lot of them put their apps up for free. that set the standard from day one. 2. social media made free the default the saying goes, "if you're not paying, you're the product." facebook, instagram, youtube and tiktok are all free because ads pay for them. for most people, social media = software. the average phone has tiktok, instagram, facebook and youtube on it, and not much else. so when you ask someone to pay for an app and every other app on their phone is free, paying feels like a bad deal. 3. people don't understand what software costs i've been in the ecommerce industry, and there's a lot of overlap but one difference. look at live shopping. people yell at other people with the same script every time: - here's the benefit - buy now - here's the scarcity line you've heard 50 times and people still buy. they buy because they understand physical products. they know the company makes money off them. they can guess it cost $5 to make and sells for $10, and they're fine with that. software is a mystery. its costs vary SO MUCH that someone with no developer experience has no idea where to start. so the only thing they can compare it to is what they already pay for: $20/mo for netflix, $10/mo for doordash. that's not a useful way to judge what software is worth. but that's sadly how the B2C market thinks. 4. VC funding raising hundreds of millions of dollars and getting the "$1b valuation" headline is sexy. but at what cost? i'd argue funding shifts the market more than anything else. most people don't know that big tech products like Meta's Muse AI agent isn't profitable. they just know Muse is free. so if a smaller developer builds a personal ai agent like Muse, they're stuck. there's absolutely no way to survive offering it for free. because the big players already swung out the gate with no price tag. this methodology only helps the company the VCs back, because it eventually meets economies of scale. everyone else eventually dies because they can't turn a profit. sometimes i wonder... if the app store hadn't launched with so many free apps, would people's bar for what software should cost be different today?