Luis Villa has left a placeholder for a larger discussion on artificial scarcity. He has a problem with:
creating artificial scarcity, either through the use of patents, copyrights, or trademarks, or by allowing others to use trade secret and SaaS (software as a service) tactics to take data from the commons and then "proprietarize" it (make it proprietary).
I see his point, and agree, but any business depends on artificial scarcity of some kind. Or, rather, I should say instead that successful businesses are good at creating the appearance or reality of scarcity. Why? Because otherwise, the customer will take forever to buy something, even if they want it today. Right now.
This is actually one of the weaknesses of an open-source business model. ... Read more
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