Yostivanich

All this points to one thing: Open source is an infra­struc­ture. Just like the roads in the city that auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ers are inter­ested in, soft­ware com­pa­nies want access to exist­ing infra­struc­ture to build their own prod­ucts upon and make money, instead of hav­ing to re-invent the wheel every­time. It’s a win-win sit­u­a­tion for all com­pa­nies. Pay­ing Microsoft to get Win­dows to sup­port their prod­ucts can be an expen­sive affair. So mak­ing an oper­at­ing sys­tem a com­mod­ity is in everyone’s inter­ests (well, except Microsoft’s). The web browser is another exam­ple of a com­mod­ity today. Everyone’s inter­ested in a good, con­for­mant, open plat­form on which to develop their web appli­ca­tions on.

via Mod­ern thoughts on open source | Artagnon’s Pres­ence.