This website which you're on right now is free (as in beer), free (as in freedom), open source software called Nonograph. It cost about $600 USD to release, mostly due to two initial security reviews.
Now I give it away for free to you and anyone who wants it.
Thing is, I've witnessed the enshittification of otherwise amazing websites, apps, and services due to subscriptions, forced AI features, and things designed to attract venture capitalists, not passionate people.
What used to be included in the base price is now its own feature package that costs $9.99. Oh wait now it's $11.99. What's this? $12.99 with ads you say?
Money is a fact of life, but not everything needs to be or even should be monetized. For a little writing program such as Nonograph which costs about $5 a month to host with a few hundred thousand daily readers, including three proxies, implementing subscription infrastructure would only drive up development costs and turn people away.
If everyone tried to monetize their hobbies, then that would just be a second job, and jobs are no fun.
Instead of working a traditional job as a teenager, I sold video game content online. What I learned through this experience is that it really does turn your passion from something that you actively seek out because you enjoy it, to something that you seek out because you want to meet a quota or turn a profit. You're always chasing the next quarter or the next thousand customers.
If software development is treated as a vehicle for self-exploration, rather than just a means to a financial end, this makes a lot more sense. From my experience, it also generally produces better software that doesn't come with user hostile (value extracting) actions or features because there's no expectation of a financial return.
If you think of software development as a hobby like painting or playing an instrument or getting exercise in the woods, then it starts to make a lot more sense why someone would wish to take a loss on it. The real gain isn't always money; it's experience, discovery, new perspectives, and sometimes personal goals.
That's all. Just some thoughts. Maybe you (developers chasing VC) should consider whether your software is worth paying for and charge (or not) accordingly. Most projects don't need a team of 3+ engineers, they should stay hobby projects.