Directions for open source software over the next decade

Open source software lets users study, modify and redistribute the source code. It has shown a surprisingly robust level of activity and importance in the computing world despite extreme dominance of Microsoft operating and office software in the workstation marketplace and the strength of commercial players in the server and industrial sectors. Possible evolutionary drivers are presented for open source software for the next decade, looking at the nature as well as level of use, with preliminary discussion of how the open source approach might be applied to other idea-based technologies, including foresight methods.