How/why do all the thousands of packages that are available as open source and enable basically everyone to code and make programs stay free? Everything else in the world is turned into a product to make a profit.
This is similar to the extensive resources available on the internet like StackOverflow where people literally give people answers to their problems for nothing. Like, someone could work for a company and use other peoples work and benefit from it.
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In the early days of computers, computers cost a lot of money, $20,000+. They were very simple and came with very simple software. In those days, you bought the computer and got the software for free. You got the source code so you could modify it for your needs. Then, once companies realized that software was actually the important part, they stopped giving it away and started charging for it.
There are two main movements that grew out of this. First was the Free Software Foundation. They started in 1985. They said if these companies aren’t going to give us their software anymore, we will write our own operating system and other software tools. And we will make rules you have to make the source code available, no matter what. They started building the tools to create an operating system, called GNU. They never got their operating system finished, but then came along Linus Torvolds, took all their tools and started building Linux.
Then in the late 90s, Linux and free software started becoming popular, but it still had this hippie / anti corporate attitude. So along came the Open Source Initiative and rebranded Free Software as Open Source to be more corporate friendly. They advocated that developers should make their source code free, but not require those who use the source code to make it free as well. This was a big difference from Free Software Foundation.
But then around 2000, the whole computer industry changed again. It was no longer about selling software, it was about selling services. So then companies realized if you make the software free, get people hooked, then sell them services or ads.
So companies like Google give away Android so that phone companies will use it, and then people get hooked on Google’s services.
For more on the difference between Free Software and Open Source: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html
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