Netscape tried it. GetRight tried it; darn, even winzip tried it but people just wont pay for it. On the other hand, once you start adding copy protection mechanisms that work, we all start whining.
Corollary law: once a good enough product is released in a consumer categoryfor free, nobody will ever want to pay for anything in that category again, even if they could easily afford it :)
Re:The cult of the free must die
by lotsofpulp on Thursday August 13, 2020 @08:52AM
(#24142794)
Hence the success of SaaS and monthly fees.
ie why are upfront mobile app prices free or peanuts? A big reason is cause they started that way. If mobile app prices started at closer to desktop app prices at the beginning, we’d probably have a much different mobile app marketplace today.
Another example: developer salaries in the US compared to rest of world, where they’re much lower even after normalization. I posit that a key reason was the easy money VC years around 2010, and they just stayed high ever since.
I’m sure there’s a proper economic term for this phenomenon :)