Abso-freaking-lutely! Commodity software income trends to zero, especially as competitors enter the market and trim away the features that are unwanted, leavin

Abso-freaking-lutely! Commodity software income trends to zero, especially as competitors enter the market and trim away the features that are unwanted, leaving a minimal (fast to develop) product behind. I don't actually believe that B2C software for "average consumers" where user pays for software is a viable market outside of certain markets (e.g., antivirus updates). The incentives are simply too aligned with gratis software doing something acceptably well for the vast majority of people, probably ad-supported. patio11 recently linked an article about selling to flies/mice/deer/elephants. It's really worth reading. I firmly believe that the only games in town over the next 5-10 years for financial revenues from software are: 1. ad-supported mass market (E.g., gmail) 2. B2C niche (e.g., Bible study software) 3. B2C SaaS (backup software, dropbox, Google apps) 4. B2B SaaS (most of web stuff) 5. B2B desktop/server - usually 1-time fee + maintenance over a few years. B2C Desktop buy-once and run is pretty extinct, afaict. For me, it's been replaced by libre software like LibreOffice, Emacs, and Firefox.