The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development

2010, Book: "Open source software involves developers at many different locations and organizations sharing code to develop and refine computer programs that are then distributed at no or low direct cost. Over the past fifteen years open source software has experienced explosive growth around the world. The importance of open source software today can be illustrated by considering a few examples: • The market for server software, which is used by the computers that make Web pages available to users through the Internet, has been dominated by the open source Apache project since the inception of systematic tracking by Netcraft in 1995. As of July 2009 more than half of servers employed Apache or other open source products, rather than commercial alternatives from Microsoft, Oracle, or other firms."