What Can't Open Source Achieve in the Next 10 Years?
Exactly ten years ago I was sitting in a small but cosy flat in the west of Helsinki, waiting to interview its owner. As you've probably guessed, his name was Linus Torvalds - the trophies belong to his wife.
Wired's decision to devote the first mainstream feature to him and GNU/Linux was brave in 1996. At the time, free software was barely known outside a small, if growing circle of hackers.
Fast-forward ten years. GNU/Linux completely dominates the field of supercomputing. In the world of business computing, GNU/Linux is thriving in the server room, and is now the only serious competitor to Windows there.
Even on the desktop, things are looking up for open source. Firefox has emerged from the ashes of Netscape Navigator to take ever-bigger bites of the browser market. And with OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument Format, the free software world finally has a standard that is able to take on - and beat - Microsoft Office.
These are extraordinary achievements; indeed, open source has become so successful, so pervasive, that we are in danger of forgetting how much has been done.
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