Good question. My gut is people over value the importance of free users. Especially so if there's good business or corporate sales for the product. Free users are not zero cost on either infra or product/dev/support time.

Perhaps this is Bending Spoons real business model - understand which customers bring you revenue and pivot to product development for them not the free loaders. Sounds obvious but there aren't too many software product companies actually do it. Takes a lot of discipline as an org - generally orgs listen to the loudest voices which are most likely the ones not bringing any revenue.

Companies like Microsoft show that you can coast on a successful product for many decades and still be incredibly financially successful. And the world is a lot bigger place than selling MS Word & Excel in the 2000s.