I see all these
people saying how
eventually the somewhat
recent boom in
open source/
free software will
eventually fall to its
knees, and I can't help but ask,
how?
While Linux (both kernel and various user-space programs) is put under a weird melange of copyrights, whose owners could technically demand to pull their code at any given moment, things like the GNU project can't fail, so long as there's someone to modify it. All copyrights are put under the name of The Free Software Foundation for just that purpose: it can't die; it will always be free. So even if, say, RMS becomes a Massachusetts hobo begging for food, if I, or anyone, could find a GNU mirror somewhere, they could still continue development under free license.
I've heard people cite over-commercialization of the community as reasons why it will fail. Well, as long as it's common practice to put as much code under the GPL as possible, I see no problem with this. But, let's say, hypothetically, 10 years down the road, I need a kernel module for my nanotech molecule assembler to get my flying car working again. Well, even if nobody even knows what the hell "Linux" is anymore ("a guy named linus in around 1990-something? is he that jerk who revealed the magician's secrets?"), I could still try and hack in support for it, and if enough people say, "hey, that's cool", the community will grow again. It's as simple as that. Just because the code is no longer under rapid development (or "dead") doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that I can't modify it.
I say the biggest
threat are those
mixed-copyright projects, but
GNU will always be free. And then there're those
tricky licenses, but
RMS and other
purists will be around to
chant what is
unholy and
forgive us of our sins. If the
booming economy goes
downhill (it has shown
signs of this already, and
clueless morons promising tax cuts will not
help), I could see a problem.
Oh, and let's not forget *BSD.. they could much more easily have problems for obvious reasons.