“I was thinking about the future of Linux when it occurred to me
that one path for its future can seen as a simple consequence of
what we mean by ‘winning.’ In other words, asking whether Linux
will still be a winner in ten years leads first to the question of
what we mean by ‘winner’ and then to an answer about where Linux is
going.“If by ‘winning’ we mean making your software do what you want
it to for your community of interest while seeing your ideas become
widely influential, then the lessons of open source history are
clear: winners either build in the academic tradition of humbly
taking other people’s work forward or roll history back to some
branching and then set off in whole new directions…”