“Not only does the ascent of the open source movement and
its proponents presage a major change in how software is developed
and sold, it also heralds a fundamental change in the dynamics of
the computer business….“
“Now, we don’t want folks thinking we are jumping on the “bash
Microsoft” bandwagon because we aren’t. But the fact is that
Microsoft misjudged the importance of the Internet and has been
playing catch-up for quite a while. And the result is that,
truthfully, Microsoft can’t take credit for any of the current
Internet boom.”
“The boom is happening this time because of open standards, not
de facto ones, with the most important standards being the Internet
protocols themselves, like TCP/IP and HTML. Both are open standards
that nobody owns, that follow published specifications that require
no license fees and that have freely available reference
implementations.”