"If nobody paid for software, there would be no way to develop it professionally."

As it happened, soon people returned to using free software

"But the real money turned out to lie in data, not code."

If true then to make "real money", "professional" software developers would need to switch from producing code to producing data

As it happened "professional" software developers began using software as a Trojan Horse to steal others' data

This story is not over yet