This is very simple. Tools in the "real world" generally work on one protocol: physics. Yes.. there are standards and industries and the like in physical tool

This is very simple. Tools in the "real world" generally work on one protocol: physics. Yes.. there are standards and industries and the like in physical tools, but those are much more static and unchanging. Because physics and material world. A tool will generally be relevant until it wears out, and often/sometimes is useful for decades after "obsolescence". In software, where (looks at the Javascript ecosystem) things change in a year. Sometimes less. Version churn and feature churn means your tool is obsolete/useless (if you are lucky) within 3-4 years. Often less. In regular tools, it is pretty clear the distinction between a tool and the end product. But in software, a tool is SOFTWARE, with all the problems of software: version churn, feature drift, underlying OS support, and all the other quicksand. Tool markets are also inherently a fraction the endproduct market: The produced product volume is say 10x to 100x the value of the cost of the tool in the physical world before it needs replacement or wears out. Software being what it is, you can get 100000x - infinite the tool. That value proposition means the market for the tool is the inverse of the value factor of the tool. In software, you would get one tool and use it for 100000 products / views / etc. So the market for it is lower. Perplexingly to my point about software tools going out of support, is that REALLY established tools are long lived and never wear out. So a hot gee-whiz tool will be competing against well-featured tools (often free after a while because tool vendors go out of business and open source it), so there isn't much gee-whiz anymore. OpenAI is an interesting "tool". We'll see where it goes commercially. But most tools have reproducibility. AI tools do not, at least currently they don't. Free software tools seem more durable, because the user population sustains it generally with contributions, bug reports, feedback, and demand. And sometimes the minimal money to support the org. And sometimes marketing. Software is also generally about building a bandwagon. Gatekeeping tools are not good for bandwagon building. So software tools are generally free to make jumping on the bandwagon easier.