Blazing trails with open source
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| It's often said that open source doesn't innovate. It imitates.
| That's certainly what the proprietary software industry would have
| you believe.
|
| [...]
|
| But none of this discounts the fact that open source has blazed a trail
| or two of its own rather than simply following the pack. The Apache Web
| server is a prime example. Apache has been the Web's server of choice
| since it was forked from the National Center for Supercomputing
| Applications' httpd in 1995. According to Netcraft, the Web site and
| server barometer, 62 percent of all Internet Web sites run Apache
| today, compared with 31 percent running Microsoft IIS (Internet
| Information Server).
|
| [...]
|
| Across the software industry, countless developers, individuals, and
| companies are experimenting with open source methods. One reason is
| because community-driven development allows a software product to grow
| organically. As Eric S. Raymond observed in his seminal work, The
| Cathedral and the Bazaar, "Every good work of software starts by scratching
| a developer's personal itch." When a group of developers begins to
| collaborate in an open fashion, each one scratching a unique personal
| itch, the result is software that expands to fill those functional areas
| not addressed by proprietary offerings.
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http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;584895183;fp;2;fpid;3
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