[dijit]

I’d argue that it’s a huge barrier to innovation.

Most people getting started are not going to understand systems administration enough to set up a server like that. But they can run software locally.

One of the first projects I was ever a part of was a “WAMP” machine (Windows Apache MySQL & PHP) running Nuke Evolution forum software. I learned a lot from that and would never do it again but it was a useful project for some people and I learned a lot by patching around the source files and learning about MySQL enough to make backups and improvements and so on.

Being able to put up a simple service is but only one of the reasons to be publicly addressable, P2P is also important (things like games, VoIP) but $20 for a VPS is no small barrier.

Not for someone getting started.