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That suggests there's never been a viable market for commercial software at all, which is obviously wrong.

That's kind of black and white thinking though. No one is going to pay a million dollars for QuickBooks, but a lot of people paid several hundreds. Just because no one pays you to develop a new QuickBooks (at least pre LLM), doesn't mean there's not a market there.

Okay, then sell it until you make a million bucks then open source it.

Isn't that the whole point of crowdfunding platforms like kickstarter?

Developer presents the idea and how much it costs. If enough people pitch in, then the idea is funded, the developer gets the money as a lump sum and can turn the idea into reality.

Why did this model fail?

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