Back in the nineties I worked for Powersoft and from time to time I had to go to Moscow for a business trip. And there you could have bought CDs full of software on a corner for a few bucks. I was very upset to see Borland, Inprise, Borland, CodeGear Delphi and not PowerBuilder on those CDs. It was obvious to me that once you take the price out of the price/performance equation it is only performance that matters. Nobody will copy an inferior product that is free and so the superior product can gain a big piece of a market share very quickly.
What I did not know then is that this one of the aspects of digital goods and it is called the economics of abundance. You can read more about it here and here.
