Considering the strong opinion on this topic, OP is probably young enough to not remember (or know) the 80s and 90s with too few free options for personal computing and most of the software is proprietary and non-free (exactly as the OP states). While it fueled the traction of shareware, it was a very different epoch, and impossible today with strict controls from MS, Google and Apple on what app is allowed to run. It's easy to wish the world to be different, but it would be much harder to live in with the today reality of secureboot and AppStore controls.

It's possible to say we don't have personal colputers anymore, they are MS/Apple/Google's device now, as they decide what it is allowed to run and what isn't.