Not a new idea at all, but the implications hit me hard as I was considering monetization models for my apps.
Unless you are lucky (network effects, timing), grandfathered in, or provide exceptional value, the natural cost of software is free.
Intuit is an example of a grandfathered-in, exceptionally high-value software approach.
And Intuit knows it. They leverage their advantage to a predatory extent.
My wife is an EA, and I know for a fact Intuit puts the screws to all its users. Switching costs are high, and since the sector is an oligopoly, there's really no one to switch to.
But that too shall pass. Hopefully we'll soon see people create bespoke solutions that cut Intuit out. Oh, how I look forward to that day (ironic, I know).
This implies, I think, that if you can't find 1,000 fans or got in under the old model, getting as many users as possible and then transitioning to an advertising model is The Way.
Or perhaps loot/gambling style addictive mechanics? Big data? Everyone an influencer? Regulatory niches?
Once you have scale, advertising works; then users can either pay to avoid it or endure it. We see Netflix and Amazon Prime already doing this.
Yuck. I'm already nostalgic. Or am I wrong?
The marginal price for producing a video is practically nothing, with most of the world's population carrying around video equipment in a cell phone that outperforms what a video production company would have used decades ago, after spending the equivalent of several years wages to procure. The effect has been a rapidly rising video industry on the likes of YouTube and TikTok, majorly upsetting the entrenched video production houses from decades ago, and creating significant job losses for those companies, but growing the industry as a whole.
Having similarly marginal costs to software production will likely have a similar effect, where directing what to do with the software will become more important than the writing of the software itself, and individuals in their free time will be competitive against industry giants.
[1] https://plaintextaccounting.org/
The real driving factor is support, and open source tends to be very extractive when it comes to support, leading to burn-out and dead projects.
The reason Intuit and others can maintain a monopoly on the particular software they've created (and not lose it to LLM generated or open source clones) is that they have support that won't disappear on a whim, probably.
I understand how as someone wishing to make money this may be undesirable. But I think it is worth considering the bigger picture of what a high-cost life vs a low-cost life looks like for us as individuals, and as a society.