Read Against Intellectual Monopoly for Free Online Page A

Whatever you are viewing on the
Web - we hesitate to ask what it might be - is served up by a Web server.
Netcraft regularly surveys Web sites to see what Web server they are using.
In December 2004, Netcraft polled all of the 58,194,836 Web sites it could
find on the Internet, and found that the open-source Web server Apache
had 68.43 percent of the market, Microsoft had 20.86 percent, and Sun
had only 3.14%. Apache's share is increasing; all others' market shares are
decreasing. So again, if you used the Web today, you almost certainly used
open-source software.6

    Even on the desktop, open source is spreading and not shrinking. Ten
years ago there were two major word-processing packages, Word and WordPerfect. Today the only significant competitor to Microsoft for a package of
office software that includes word processing is the open-source program
OpenOffice.
    Thousands of productive and highly paid programmers voluntarily
choose to produce and market software products that are distributed freely
to end users and to other developers. This must surely lead one to question
the common assumption that - without copyright and patents - the information technology revolution would have not come about, or that it will
die in the years to come.

    Why has the software market worked so well under competition and
without intellectual monopoly? The wide use of free software licenses has
unleashed the great collaborative benefit of competition. Open-source software makes available the underlying source code from which the computer
programs are compiled. Of particular importance is the free software movement, pioneered by Richard Stallman and others. Free software not only is
open source but also is released under a license such as the GNU General Public License (GPL),which allows modifications and distribution only
when the source code to those modifications is made available under the
same license. It should be understood here that the word free here means
(according to the motto of the GNU project) "free as in freedom, not free
as in beer." Although free software is often distributed without charge, it is
the freedom of the user to make use of the software that distinguishes free
software, not the price at which it is sold. The free software license serves
as a commitment for those who wish that their contribution also be freely
available, and as a guarantee to users that they will have access to the source
code in the future, if they so wish.
    These free software licenses have allowed most open-source software to be
written by large and loosely organized teams of programmers, each of which
contributes small pieces of code and all of which benefit from the sharing
of information and ideas. Because of the commitment to make public all
the ideas and code, each individual collaborator expects to benefit from the
advances made by his or her colleagues, and so has strong incentive to share
ideas and code. Moreover, individuals who may not actually be part of the
"formal" team often contribute ideas and expertise - also assured that they
will ultimately benefit from the innovation triggered by their information.
    It is striking to us that a Washington conservative think tank figure
such as Ken Brown, president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, an
extremely vocal proponent of the great benefits of the free enterprise system,
would argue against public licenses such as the GPL.7 Brown apparently feels
that this private institution is some form of government socialism. Although
there is a strong case for eliminating or deregulating intellectual monopoly
such as copyright and patents - which are inimical to free enterprise and
capitalism - there is also a strong case for preserving copyleft contracts such
as the GPL, which strengthen free enterprise and the system of competitive
markets.
    The success of open-source software is not some strange miracle, unrepeatable under normal circumstances.