To date, the idea that software developers working within
multiple organizations without compensation to call their own could
possibly mount a serious challenge to Microsoft’s hordes of wealthy
or soon-to-be-wealthy programmers — working from the safe solidity
of a near-monopoly in the programs that control the operations of
desktop, portable and server computers — has been scoffed at as
the wishful thinking of the company’s plentiful but weak
detractors.
But a closer look at the record of development of Web-based
computing puts the efforts in a much different light. In fact, the
free software movement has delivered commercial-quality products in
every key component of software infrastructure for computing in a
hyperlinked world.