Open Source Software: The Tide Is Coming In

by Tom Welsh

It is about 20 years since the idea of free software was first seriously proposed. Open source software (OSS), as it is now more often called, has become a commercial reality for even the most hard-nosed, traditionally minded CIOs. It is difficult to open an IT newspaper or magazine, browse the Web, or even read your e-mail without having your attention drawn to various aspects of OSS. (Not to mention the fact that most of us rely on behind-the-scenes OSS every time we browse the Web or read e-mail). Most important of all, OSS is being ever more widely used, even in highly demanding mission-critical and business-critical applications. As well as driving much of the worldwide Internet and Web infrastructures, it has been heavily adopted by industry, commerce, academia, and even government.