[lifts hand up] Uh-uh, me, pick me: because most consumers have been trained and conditioned by corporations that they only pay for the HW, the thing that they can feel and resell, and that the SW running on it should come for free and always be free despite SW updates being a continuous effort that costs money.

Most consumers can't put a value on SW ownership, unless that SW is a video-game on a disc in their hand. Thanks to Google, Youtube, etc, we've grown to expect that everything digital of value should be free even though it's not. So ads it is.