I didn't go into the details but ads/data are a funding mechanism. It's a funding method where you pay with intangibles, and is successful because ads/data are

I didn't go into the details but ads/data are a funding mechanism. It's a funding method where you pay with intangibles, and is successful because ads/data are implicitly available on literally every platform out there and is so convenient it requires literally zero clicks on the user's behalf to activate. I didn't mention it because it's uhhhh, antithetical to Free Software. Let me explain that: Free Software says "put ultimate power in the users' hands, so that they can call the shots" - this is why they commonly use the GPL (sorry if obvious). Ads/tracking puts the devs at the mercy of the third parties who are paying their bills, despite said third parties not giving a shit about the quality of the software. It's why ads are so often unoptimized. A more minor reason is that it's situational. Anything offline basically can't do either. Anything like libpng just doesn't really make sense. But fundamentally, the crux is that devs have to do what they're paid to do. There are exceptions, but those are only exceptions and not the rule.