"having to set up payments, etc"

people (including me) complain about apple taking a 30% cut from developers, but for that money, they do make that part easy.

But why should people do apps for free?

People should be paid to do something, rather than be paid for something they did.

What? I create something, and I shouldn't be able to sell it? What?

Software isn't a "thing" so there is nothing to sell. The only way to monetize software is to monetize the labor of writing it directly. When you "sell" "licenses" to software, you're just double, triple, N dipping on monetizing labor that already happened.

The alternative is charging to write software, which is actually how most people (employees) make money writing software. Corporations take advantage of the difference between paying people to write software, and charging people over and over again to use the same software that has already been written.

I never said "they should do apps for free". I was rebutting the idea that small app developers don't give any thought to pricing and just use a monthly subscription, which sounds like more work than just giving it away for free. If they landed on a subscription model they must have given it _some_ thought.

Obviously they want to be paid.