You're confusing free with libre. Apple's software and Unreal are free as in "free beer".
I'm not confusing them. The fact that they are not libre is precisely the point I was making. They are both proprietary intellectual property and encumber the person using them with financial obligations under some conditions.
> Apple's software and Unreal are free as in "free beer".
No, they are not. They're free as in "free beer when consumed on our premises, max five per customer, and if you sell our free beer to someone else we'll take some of that revenue thank you very much".
Right, and my point is that it's not free as in beer.
But it is. Being free as in "free beer" has nothing to do with being or not being public domain or copyleft.
Public domain or copyleft refer to free as in "free speech".
Tell that to Epic Games' department of license revenue.
Edit:
In Epic's case the tools remain free as in beer. There's no additional cost to using them.
Epic applies a fee to what you produce with them, and even then:
> A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game) and the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in this case, the first $1 million remains royalty-exempt.
If you were to distribute your product for free (as you want), you wouldn't pay Epic a single cent.
If you want to lump that in with free as in beer because Epic isn't taking money from people who haven't made something particularly profitable, okay, but I don’t think many people would agree with you.
(It's also free-as-in-you're-part-of-their-marketing-strategy. Widespread "free" use of Unreal Engine helps build developer experience with Unreal Engine, increasing the availability of relevant skills in the job market, and making its use more attractive when it comes time to start a big, highly profitable project.)
Your attempt to somehow conflate it with someone's business models are laughable at best. All software comes with strings attached. And the biggest one is: even people who distribute software for free still have a business to run and mouths to feed.
Or indeed that post's parent, where a different opinion was offered about when a license for CoreML libraries was paid. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32905596
Or its parent, the one which initially defined the scope of the discussion, which was "...Apple charging a license for the frameworks and tooling they provide..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32905555
Not about the Xcode IDE itself which I agree is free-as-in-beer. (Though others might disagree — an argument could be made that it was paid for the purchase of a relevant Apple hardware product; the fact that it wasn't pre-installed being a mere technicality.)
Unreal Engine is "free" too.
Except it isn't. Neither Unreal Engine nor Apple's developer frameworks (shipped alongside Xcode) are public domain or copyleft. They're both proprietary code available under a license that permits certain usages, disallows certain usages, is royalty free under some conditions, and requires payment under other conditions.
> Apple 'takes their cut' when
That's not for you to decide. Epic can decide when to take money from developers who use Unreal Engine, and how much they're entitled to. It's equally Apple's decision which payment represents compensation for the developer's use of their intellectual property, and how much they're entitled to.