Software production and availability has increased greatly since the advent of the Web – anyone in the industry can see it. Why? What is the significant feature? It is the range and scale of software that is free/libre and open-source.
But what about the rise of ‘app’ markets, is that not where the action is? No. Because that is not software. It is vitiated software. It is software made to be less like information, and more like an old material object.
Software that really is software is about being copied, and changed, and reused, and remade – something communicated and mutated by the network. That is what information means.
This is the real distinction: free-software / open-source web-integrated software is living software, closed-source restricted productised ‘app-store’ software is dead software.