Right now you have a bunch of companies in the top 10 that see software as a commodity they either give away for free or keep entirely to themselves and do not

Right now you have a bunch of companies in the top 10 that see software as a commodity they either give away for free or keep entirely to themselves and do not sell directly: Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and to a degree Amazon (AWS) and even Microsoft. Apple makes money on Hardware, followed by services (incl the App Store). The software that people actually run they give away (mostly), like macOS, iOS, productivity apps bundled with their OSes, XCode, etc. Alphabet makes a living mostly off of services (mostly ad brokerage, some cloud stuff too) and gives away a lot of software (such as Android, the Play* apps and other google apps), but rarely sells "old school"/non-subscription software licenses. Facebook? They do not sell software either, they sell services (ad brokerage). They give away a lot of software, be it their apps you can install (Facebook, Messenger, WhatApp, Instagram) or their open source low-level stuff. Amazon AWS sells services. The actual software they run is an implementation detail. Even core Amazon moved a lot from selling actual goods as a retailer to being a "marketplace" service platform for other retailers. And with Prime Video and Music, they carved out their place in the subscriptions space too. They also sell some hardware too (Echo, Fire, Kindle), tho mostly not to make a ton of money directly off of it but bolster their other products. Microsoft wants in on the services thing too, gave away a ton of Win10 licenses to make sure the network effect isn't compromised, and started entering the services/subscriptions market more aggressively with things like Xbox Live (the actual console bordering on being a loss leader) and Office 365, and to a degree the Microsoft Store, tho not particularly successful so far. Even Oracle desperately wants in on the services/cloud thing for a long time. Netflix is subscriptions. The software again is an implementation detail. Samsung sells hardware and to a degree services and subscriptions, but gives away their software. Adobe is all about subscriptions too. Red Hat? Subscriptions and services. Their new parent IBM? Subscriptions, services and hardware. There is hardly any major player left that actually sells you software like Microsoft did. Those who sell software usually sell you subscriptions not the software itself.