It's free as in beer, and you get to look at the source code. It's not libre software.
This has been debunked so many times I'm not going to bother.
They have already forgone a lot of potential revenue by allowing anyone to get the source code for the engine (under a proprietary license) without paying anything. The only thing left is to design a non-royalty revenue model that can work with a free software license. This has already been solved.
> Moreover, what would be profit of others except the right of copying their code?
Being able to release free software games using UE. Creating a community around UE that allows for innovation by that community. Porting to new platforms by that community. A show of good will to the free software community. There are many good reasons, but they all come about from giving people software freedom.
They're making to pay only those who has profits from using their engine. Those who has no profits (i.e. less than $3000) wouldn't buy it anyway.
> Being able to release free software games using UE.
You can do that now.
> Creating a community around UE that allows for innovation by that community.
There is a community.
> Porting to new platforms by that community.
You can do that now.
> There are many good reasons, but they all come about from giving people software freedom.
I am for free software, but I don't like ideology in name of ideology.