> Okay, so I'm going to charge for my development time - how exactly am I going to divide that up among the customers, many of which don't exist yet, without over-charging anyone and how are you going to make sure I don't do so in a way that doesn't "illegally institute artificial scarcity" ?

It's not my job to invent business models for other people, but all Kickstarter-type funded software is a good example of one possible way. Another is maintaining and updating a gaming server and charging for access to it, like World of Warcraft does.

> The issue here is that there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. Toro could choose to cut production of their lawnmowers by half and double the price, and this would cause "artificial scarcity". However, it would also be perfectly legal and downright stupid of Toro because the competitive lawnmower market would punish them dearly for it.

If you had a device to copy lawnmowers, but the lawnmower industry fought back to make copying lawnmowers illegal, then you'd have a working comparison.

The software industry had/has a lucrative, self-sustaining business model that was very much the same as every other business on the planet. I'm a part of that industry, so I do have a business model. IOW, I'm not the one trying to tell someone that they shouldn't charge for their efforts/products, so it seems to me that the onus on coming up with a workable model is on those that have been trying to institute the "everything is free" model for some time, not me.

As for your other comment: I believe there's a saying that covers this:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_my_aunt_had_balls,_she%27d...