Yes, but the point is that rent seeking profits come from things which don’t contribute to economic productivity, which is the accusation being discussed. Having non-zero costs doesn’t imply that you’re not rent seeking.

I know what rent seeking is. That is why it is wrong to claim any salary/profit above operating costs are rent seeking.

I didn’t claim that and neither did the commenter before me. The commenter implied that, because the operation has non-zero costs, it must not be rent seeking. I offered a correction.

So then what is the cutoff and who gets to decide it?

I doubt anything has literally perfectly zero contribution.

The market does. So competitors and demand.

The problem is that you have really only little competitors on the market.

Eg. Microsoft 365 namely being the one that has outgrown any competitors that can seriously threaten them. They can dictate the prices and they do it willy-nilly and there is no-one that forces them to be cheaper.

The market doesn’t write comments on HN… clearly another entity must be typing out readable comments.