[tenahu]

Software should not be free for the users. The expectation that profits must be made through advertising, paired with the entitlement of users who scoff at the idea of paying for a product is a recipe for disaster over the long term.

[fragmede]

Users, wallets full from a well paying, satisfying career job, will look a piece of software that they get tremendous use out of, decide that not only is it worth it, but want to support the developers of the product, and gleefully open their wallets and bestow money on the company that made it. Lol no just kidding. The first stop is to ask them pirate bay if they have a crack for it, then if there's an open source free version, and at no point are they really going to pay for, say, Winzip.

It's no wonder that free-but-with-ads is the predominant distribution method today.

[atleastoptimal]

Would Google have ever gotten off the ground if it started off paid?