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What's the Most Expensive Software per Byte? (buttondown.email/hillelwayne)
3 points by whoibrar on July 13, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments



I would say the Apollo or space shuttle software was bloody expensive per byte, even discounting the “box” it was installed in. Anything made to that standard probably runs on multiple duplicated systems and “just can’t fail”. I’m not sure anything gets built to that standard today…. Maybe banking or investing?


> Second, pricing structures for software can get very weird. So we’re only looking at things that have a flat cost per license and aren’t “contact us for a sales quote” where they just charge whatever they think you can afford. And it must be commodity software, aka you pay the price tag and you have it within a week. Otherwise the answer would be a 0day exploit or custom software written for NASA.


k/kdb+. The distribution was < 500KB in its early days. The price was high enough that there was no published price list.


k/kdb+. The distribution was < 500KB in its early days. The price was high enough that there was no published price list.




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