In the past, the same could have been said of compilers and even web server and mail server software.
I'm not sure the exact same thing could have been said which to me seems like a testament to how complicated software pricing can be. Web servers never really sold†, platform vendors eventually figured out it's better for them for compilers to be free (non-platform vendors still sell compilers), etc.
† back in the 90s, Netscape used to pester web companies to make their Apache installs lie that they are Netscape web servers.
I'm not sure the exact same thing could have been said which to me seems like a testament to how complicated software pricing can be. Web servers never really sold†, platform vendors eventually figured out it's better for them for compilers to be free (non-platform vendors still sell compilers), etc.
† back in the 90s, Netscape used to pester web companies to make their Apache installs lie that they are Netscape web servers.