After Scarcity

Software is about to become nearly free to write. The question is who gets the benefit.

For decades, software has been expensive to make, so most of it has come from organizations large enough to afford the cost. That expense kept software scarce and mostly closed. We rent many of our tools rather than own them, we run on systems we cannot inspect, and we depend on software whose direction is set by someone else. This is the world scarcity built.

That scarcity is ending. The cost of writing software is falling toward zero, and what software is for will change with it.

There are two ways this can go.

In one, the cost collapse accrues to a small number of platforms. They produce more software faster, while everyone else keeps renting it. The next era of computing gets built on what they own, and the advantage concentrates further rather than spreading out. The imbalance we already have grows.

In the other, the cost collapse accrues to the people who could not produce software before. Anyone who can describe a tool can build one. Software becomes less something we buy and more something we make, for ourselves, for each other, for whoever needs it. The field stops moving at the speed of product roadmaps and starts moving at the speed of human curiosity.

These paths produce different worlds. The first is the path of least resistance.

We are building toward the second path because it should exist. It requires software that actually works, that respects the people who use it, and that anyone can build and evolve.

Scarcity built the world we have. We're building the one that comes next.