[nl]

You can do this for many things now.

Walmart, McDonalds, Nike - none really have any secrets about what they do. There is nothing stopping someone from copying them - except that businesses are big, unwieldy things.

When software becomes cheap companies compete on their support. We see this for Open Source software now.

[gf000]

These are businesses with extra-large capital requirements. You ain't replicating them, because you don't have the money, and they can easily strangle you with their money as you start out.

Software is different, you need very very little to start, historically just your own skills and time. Thes latter two may see some changes with LLMs.

[TeodorDyakov]

How conveniently you forgot about the most impotant things for a product to make money - marketing and the network effect....

[gf000]

I don't see the relevance to the discussion. Marketing is not significantly different for a shop and a online-only business.

Having to buy a large property, fulfilling every law, etc is materially different than buying a laptop and renting a cloud instance. Almost everyone has the material capacity to do the latter, but almost no one has the privilege for the former.

[nl]

This is exactly my point.