Imagine, like with physical objects like a chair, that it were impossible to copy software. Someone would make a living out of writing software, selling it to people who needed it, and using the money to write more software. This would work beautifully.
But in reality things are not like that! Software can be copied, and this presents a lot of problems to proprietary software vendors. People *do* copy software all the time. Free software in fact encourages you to do so.
The free software ecosystem “breaks” when you can't accomplish the things you need by using free software only, and when free software companies cannot make a living because people would rather download their software than pay for it.
Penguin about to swat the Microsoft butterfly:
