Before we get into hand-picked examples, let's define what the "industry" is. Is it smartphones & tablets? Is it PCs? Is it e-commerce? Sure, Apple has an ince

Before we get into hand-picked examples, let's define what the "industry" is. Is it smartphones & tablets? Is it PCs? Is it e-commerce? Sure, Apple has an incentive to give away its OS free, because its virtually indivisible from its own hardware. Google derives the bulk of its revenue without any hardware being sold. When it does sell hardware (the Nexus phones or Moto devices), it gives away Android of course. But then it gives away Android for free to everyone else but for an entirely different set of strategic reasons. Amazon is primarily an e-commerce company, and then maybe a cloud computing one. Hardware doesn't play much of a role in either case.