Open vs. closed source -Historic data

• Where both were tried simultaneously, open source has won against closed source, despite the apparent marketing advantage of closed source companies

  • Past - X Window System
    • Bested Andrew, Sun's NeWS, Sun's X11/NeWS merge and Digital's "common server" project
    • This was even before the Internet had scaled up very far
  • Recent - Apache web server
    • Bested Netscape, and reduced Microsoft IIS to "You can't be fired for choosing Microsoft"
  • The community understands what open really is
    • Java, Sun community license is a lead balloon

• Why and How do such things happen?

  • Answers to follow...