The software business after code scarcity

"Open source companies learned how to build valuable businesses when access to the code was free."

Open source companies learned that they couldn't make a living from selling software, because almost everyone used it for free. If they want to charge for premium addons, someone can just as easily create it themselves and many in the community feel they are entitled to it and will never pay.

One way to make money is on services. It's a brutal business that doesn't scale well.

99% of all of the open source projects used today are just subsidized by a much larger company that doesn't rely on open source solely to make money. Stallman envisioned doing this, but it ended up being big corporations instead.

> Once people depend on an application, the cost of its failure has little to do with how much it cost to build. An application that costs $1,000 to build can still cause a $10 million failure.

> As software cost comes down, dependability becomes a differentiator.