When I first learned that software had a price during my very young years, I was in quite disbelief. Isn’t it just bunch of invisible bits? Can’t it be copied with almost zero cost? Why someone would pay for it anyway when kids like me can make it? It’s hard to charge money for things people can’t physically posses. In early years, almost all software companies employed a trick to design big attractive boxes with bit of goodies. When Gates wrote BASIC, many programmers themselves in the community didn’t thought any software was worth paying for. It has taken almost a generation to internalize that bits have price and we have got rid of most of those boxes finally.
On the side note, crypto currency is the new new intengible assets that is hard to internalize. Ironically, Gates has wrote them off as not worth calling them assets because they aren’t store of a value.