Smallish post 4

Free software is an interesting idea.   Usually when I am buying software I think it should be free, but other times I think otherwise.  I've always been a supporter of the free market where price is determined by supply and demand.  Software is unique in that it is difficult to quantify the supply. If another copy of a program is needed, a copy can be made fairly easily.  With an almost unlimited supply, logically the price would be low if not zero.  But there are 2 reasons that companies like Apple and Microsoft can charge so much for their software.  First,  they protect their source code, which allows them to control the supply of their software.  And second, there is an extremely high demand for the software.  The combination of these two factors allows companies to charge so much.  Controlling the supply is something that monopolies do, so in essence these companies have a monopoly on the software market.  But that may be beginning to change with the expansion of other software companies that open source programming like Linux and Android.