Free software is about freedoms, but also tends to be available for free. Consider this: if I sold a piece of free software for $1000 and the buyer was free to

Free software is about freedoms, but also tends to be available for free. Consider this: if I sold a piece of free software for $1000 and the buyer was free to share its source code, wouldn't they? Even if no actual user shared the code, a trader could buy the software and sell it onward for $500 to as many people as possible. The next trader would buy for $500 and sell copies for $100, etc. Now, the software might be difficult to build or run or use, and the vendor might be actually selling binaries, or the software as a service, or documentation, or consultation, etc. Those can be valid business models even if the source code is freely available. So theoretically, yes, free software could cost money. But its source code tends to be free as in beer, too. Freedom is much more valuable than the saved money, and that's why free beer gets scoffed at.