Here are three innovations behind the creation of the software economy:

     •     Social: Invention of a “cross-jargon interface”. I’ll describe next what that is.

     •     Regulatory: Liberation of the business-software market by IBM’s unbundling in 1969, under the threat of Government anti-monopoly action.  

     •     Technical: Moore’s Law.

     The second and third are well-known history; now I’m going to elaborate on the first.