The comparison to app store pricing is ridiculous. A better comparison would be with IDEs such as Visual Studio or IntelliJ. For each a free version exists, but

The comparison to app store pricing is ridiculous. A better comparison would be with IDEs such as Visual Studio or IntelliJ. For each a free version exists, but no race to the bottom has occurred. Instead the free version provides students and hobbyists the ability to learn the tool, which provides employers a greater pool of applicants which have experience in it. It also provides startups a way to minimize their burn rate until after a mockup or even a MVP is validated. Afterwards, in each case when the economics make sense businesses pay large amounts to buy additional premium version licensing, training, integration, and add-on tools. As primarily customer hosted software the additional cost of free riders is low, at least as low as the advertising costs required to grow the paying customer base by the same rate.