I had my own App Company back in 2009, before I went corporate and joined Apple to work on iOS. I saw the problem as this: once a person has created a valuable

I had my own App Company back in 2009, before I went corporate and joined Apple to work on iOS. I saw the problem as this: once a person has created a valuable software package, usually it costs nothing to rip it off. Example: If I create the best kick ass calculator, with 10x better UX, better functionality. And charge $10. The learning has been done and the barrier to reproduce what I've created is almost 0. So someone does that, and remakes it, adds a photo sharing feature and charges $5. Then a student comes along and thinks "that's cleaver, but what if I add farting noises" and because He gets education out of it, make's it completely free. How does the first guy recoup his R&D cost? He can't really. It's too easy to reproduce. I know this is a little simplistic, because there's the marketing effort and SEO. But it's hard to convince someone that they should buy the $10 app when there is a free app. Even if the paid one is better. (Which if you are a fan of fart noises, maybe it's not)