[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Not so long ago the common wisdom was that free and open source
software would grow strongly in the market for infrastructure
software–operating systems, databases and web servers that have a
generic applicability across all markets–but that non-free
software would continue to dominate in the realm of vertical
markets–where applications fulfill a specific role in a
specialised commercial environment.“This view, which is still held by many, was based on the
assumption that the ‘hobbyist’ programmers who initiated many of
the more famous free software projects tended to pursue sexier and
more immediate objectives, and that many areas of applications
software development would be ignored as a result…”