The “strange” products they created to sell for money, were implementations of programming languages. When most software was (1) supplied by the large company that sold the large computer it ran on, (2) was written on one of those machines by the people who were going to use it, or (3) was hobby stuff, shared freely between hobbyists.

The latter made sense, since taking and giving back to the community was a natural and fair system. Which served everyone, while obligating no one. And in any case, how would you charge for something with no physical form and that anyone can copy?