When I first (reluctantly) moved to the PC world I was in need of software to do the work I had in mind; viewing/editing images at the time. Support in Windows at the time (Win95) was atrocious and I ended up buying an image viewer.... and then a general file viewer... (...and I still want to write my own version of that concept...) then when audio became possible things had started changing. Winamp was kinda Freemium, and VLC is free. So why? Are they just crazy generous? Should Sinner Computing stop changing people for software?
Well, and I'm over simplifying here, charging for programs that support file types has got really complicated over patents. The people who design patented algorithms, such as compression, audio, images, video... they want adoption as much as the patent royalties, so they don't go after the small potatoes. Or the products that are based in countries that don't recognise software patents. Now what would happen if VLC started charging? I'd expect they'd soon be subtlety asked to return a small portion of that to the patent holders, and that's where it would get interesting.
But it won't happen. 'cos VLC is free.
So where does that leave software patents? I think now the developers of algorithms get the rewards more from the big potatoes. The broadcasters. The people who are prepared to pay a bit extra to be able to get better quality at a similar price. Cases where the reward is instantaneous. A lot of patents are kinda expired now. H264 is getting there. MPEG-2 is mostly expired so DVD players should be cheaper now. (Yay?) But you still see some holdouts. H265 can be tricky to play on some platforms, often requiring a license fee or a special app. Dolby Atmos and it's equivalents too; afterall Dolby make much of their money that way.
But VLC is patently free...
