Theres an open source version of that codec that works quite well, search for x264. You can also use something like ffdshow if your encoder supports  DShow codecs.

And BTW they have always charged for commercial codecs, its the formats that are free. ie while formats like mp3 or wmv or h.264 have always been free, software that decodes and encodes these formats may not always be so. Like there are several commercial audio/video codecs for pro archival and usage that support advanced features and are not free.