While I agree with the perceived value bit, the comment I was trying to make was more along the lines of this: quality. There's free crap, there's free quality stuff, there's expensive crap and there's expensive quality stuff.

Of those 4 categories, I think "free quality stuff" is the rarest kind. So, if you're looking for quality, it tends to be stuff you have to pay for. Because the people that are really good at creating that quality stuff are probably really good at it to the exclusion of other marketable skills.

And a man's gotta eat.

So, it's not impossible to find objectively good things for free, it's just statistically unlikely.