Austin Holdsworth

London, UK.

Freelance Consultant.

The effort can't be rationalised as being wasted because the survival of the fittest project was in itself a testament to the fact that the projects direction was right and that it had the largest support from its developers and most importantly, its user base.

The survival of the fittest open source project tends to be less dominated by commercial investment and marketing budgets than proprietary software is. When the users have a choice of software which is free, they will always choose the software which is most suited to their needs. The users will ultimately decide if a project is successful and they are a discerning lot.

It’s a competition to develop most powerful software and the race has still only just begun. Software patents could spell the end for this paradigm, but until then, open source software can only get better.