Something has to be both valuable (useful) and rare in order for people to pay for it. Useful by itself is not sufficient. A piece of open-source software can't be considered scarce if you are allowed to make a copy for microcents.
Only through legally enforced IP protections do people even pay for classic proprietary software - it's a kind of artificial scarcity (there's no moral judgement there, just an observation). But yes, hosted services and so-on are also rare (it costs more than microcents for someone else to set up an equivalent hosted service).
Only through legally enforced IP protections do people even pay for classic proprietary software - it's a kind of artificial scarcity (there's no moral judgement there, just an observation). But yes, hosted services and so-on are also rare (it costs more than microcents for someone else to set up an equivalent hosted service).