“To paraphrase a famous maxim, ‘Oh, what a difference a decade
makes.’“The emergence of the Internet over the last ten years has
brought extraordinary changes to software development. Because of
the Internet, large amounts of useful, well-engineered code are now
widely available, and much of that code is available for free or
under generous licensing terms. Moreover, there’s little
distinction these days between developers and end-users: end-users
have capitalized on the newly-networked world to take an active
role in the development and enhancement of products that many of us
use every day.