[Tfug] [OT] Microsoft Windows 7: Upgrade or just buy a pizza?

[Zack Williams]

> So who pays for the initial development?  Those developers need an income.

Who paid Linus to start making and OS?  Or Larry Wall to write Perl?
Or MIT to create Kerberos?

There's a whole lot of examples of people out there making an income,
and also innovating.  Often this happens in an educational setting, or
by frustration at the inadequacies of existing software.   The
traditional "make a product, box it up, sell for more than the
creation cost" may be a casualty of this.

What it comes down to is that I don't think the economics of false
scarcity will survive in the long term.  You may disagree, but I think
history will be closer to my side on this.

- Zack