I don't like the assertion that the only thing that was valuable on CD's was the convenience, not the music. I'd argue that the copyright itself is the reason t

I don't like the assertion that the only thing that was valuable on CD's was the convenience, not the music. I'd argue that the copyright itself is the reason the music industry had pricing power. As everyone knows, they lost the pricing power with the rise of piracy platforms and it became too costly to try and keep the market cornered as services like Spotify and Pandora started to make deals with several labels. At some point the major labels had to throw their hands up and and capitulate. It's worth noting however, that the most powerful artists- people like Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks retained their distribution rights and did not capitulate for a long time. This is further evidence that the copyright is what creates the shortage that creates the pricing power. It's really no different from the pharmaceutical industry. The cost of making the first pill of a new drug is billions of dollars. The cost of the second is basically zero. Yet drugs are extremely expensive because the companies that develop them have complete pricing power for several years because nobody else is allowed to manufacture that drug. I think the point he's making whether directly or indirectly, is that MongoDB made a miscalculation in open sourcing their software at all. I would agree with that except that one would have to wonder whether there is anything so unique about MongoDB's software that would enable them to exert much pricing power. In other words, would MongoDB risen to the level popularity they did if the software was not open source?