Meanwhile 100% of the software in the developing world was "free" at the time, and moreover it was difficult to buy software even if you wanted to pay for it. P

Meanwhile 100% of the software in the developing world was "free" at the time, and moreover it was difficult to buy software even if you wanted to pay for it. People would think you're not all right in the head or something, since you could buy a CD with $20K worth of software for less than a buck. I bet 90% of commercial software is "free" there in the same way even now, modulo the CDs. The somewhat non-obvious side effect of this is it's much harder for FOSS to get traction, unfortunately, even when it's objectively a better choice.