[ Thanks to Rajiv
for this link. ]
“Linux is an operating system with a philosophy: open source, in
which code is freely distributed so anyone can modify it and share
his or her innovations with the rest of humanity. For years,
organizations such as the GNU Project and the Free Software
Foundation have preached that open source development would
eliminate monopolies from IBM Corp. and AT&T Corp. to Novell
Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Linux’s initial success has given hope to
the open source community that its vision may finally become
reality. Is that naïve?…”
“Buoyed by their success, most Linux proponents see the entire
software industry moving to open source development over time. Just
as the Internet and e-commerce have let companies reduce inventory,
ease internal friction and scale production with the ups and downs
of the consumer market, the open source model gives software
companies a better chance to follow the software development
market. Open source advocates see the structural changes brought by
the Internet economy as having created an environment in which open
source will finally flourish–with each feeding into the
other.”
“In the Internet arena, companies like Amazon.com Inc. in
Seattle and EBay Inc. in San Jose have changed the rules in product
sales. And already, two open source efforts managed by virtual
teams connected via the Internet have delivered programs that are
part of the basic infrastructure of most Web-based businesses: the
Sendmail electronic-mail router and the Apache Web server software.
These concurrent examples have become open source advocates’
evidence that a real revolution is under way.”