People's time is valuable, especially expert developers.
The 'Code' only part of the issue with respect to input cost. Someone has to maintain that dev. account, maintain their skills, stay on top of distribution policies, probably take on some legal risk, keep the build kind of up to day.
That takes skill. We mostly want it that way so that distribution is clean and clear and reasonable for those involved.
If it's a niche product, then $20 is not going to add up to a lot of money.
If it's a professional product, then $20 is basically $0 for all intents and purposes, it's the cost of a stapler on which case cost should not be a problem.
The AppStore is generally an open market, if $20 price is too high and someone is raking in big profits, someone can publish the same thing.
In the end, what we want to achieve is a price point that matches the material value creation involved in the 'maintenance of the build and distribution aspects'.
That's actually efficient, and what we want.
There's no such thing as 'free' - it's all time and labour and there are number of issues involved.
FOSS should be considered 'volunteer labour' which makes the underlying costs more apparent, the code and licensing is a distraction from that.
That's unacceptable and repugnant, and it doesn't have any bearing on the volunteer labor.
There is such a thing that's free: free software. It was produced with volunteer labor (but doesn't have to be - look at golang!), but the end result/product is free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer.
> what we want to achieve is a price point that matches the material value creation involved in the 'maintenance of the build and distribution aspects'.
No, what I want to achieve with this free software is that anyone be able to access it without barriers whatsoever, including payment.
