On: Post Scarcity Economics

[davidw]

> OSS is there in fact.

As someone who has spent many hours hacking on open source software, I'm not sure I'd call it 'abundant' in that the production of said software is very much a costly endeavor. Once it's out there, yes, it's non-rivalrous, but that's a different thing.

[jayfuerstenberg → davidw]

Well I'm certain the internet as we know it today is largely a result of Linux being free.

Imagine the costs of getting a service oriented internet company up and running in a world where the only choice is Windows and IIS.

I wonder how much longer it would take sites like Youtube to scale to their current size.

[vidarh → jayfuerstenberg]

You're going to get some FreeBSD (and other *BSD) users riled up with that one (Hotmail and Yahoo, for example, are too notable services that did - in Hotmails case until well after the Microsoft acquisition - or do - in Yahoo's case - use FreeBSD extensively)