By Jason English
If you had told me 25 years ago that open source would be the predominant force in software development, I would’ve laughed.
Back then, at my industrial software gig, we were encouraged to patent as much IP as possible, even processes that seemed like common-sense business practices, or generally useful capabilities for any software developer.
If you didn’t, your nearest competitor would surely come out with their own patent claims, or inevitable patent trolls would show up demanding fees for any uncovered bit of code.
We did have this one developer who was constantly talking about fiddling with his Linux kernel at home, on his personal time. Interesting hobby.
It is hard to fathom how much the whole Linux open-source franchise is worth today when you look at all of the Apache servers and related open Linux-related projects that are in production now in huge enterprises, across so many different technology spaces. In 2015 a Linux Foundation study estimated the total development contribution value to the codebase at US$5 billion — or 41,192.25 collaborative years of work!
