So what is this quiet revolution that’s been seeping into society? It’s the wonder of the open source software movement. After reading an article in CIO it looks like the revolution is hitting it’s stride and coming out of the darkness.

If you’ve never heard of open source software (OSS), it’s something that originally started out as a hobby. People who would write software, either in part or in total, and then give the result away to the world. For free.

That hobby has grown to the point where it involves thousands of people across the globe and the resulting software can be anything from interesting experiments to applications rivaling the power of commercial offerings: web servers, database servers, office productivity suites and more.

There have long been advocates of OSS over commercial counterparts, but they used to be discounted in the corporate boardrooms. They were simply brushed off by the decision makers who value established brand names and companies that could offer support services.

Then a couple of years ago some notable companies made commitments to OSS, IBM was one however the more important one in my opinion is Apple. Apple made a bold move by announcing that the core of their operating OS X, called Darwin, would be based on open source software. What this means is that the base computer programing that runs their operating system is available for absolutely anyone to look at and modify. Now there are those who would say that Darwin doesn’t really count, however I think that distracts from the significance of the move.

IBM and Apple are just a few of the companies, and not small companies, that are making serious changes. Sometimes as radical as basing the future of their flagship products on the abilities of hobbyists. So what’s the significance of this?

In the beginning, home computers were hobbies. Enthusiasts would build and program computers for the fun of it. They would take their creations and share them with others who would sometimes takes those ideas and work to make them better. Then, as the industry began to take off, several individuals made the transition from hobby to business and have become quite successful with it. Software moved out of the hobby arena and into the corporate arena. People became employees who programed things not because they wanted to, but because they were being paid to.

With all the success the industry saw, the hobbyists fell back in to obscurity. There they quietly worked together, continuing to build the projects they were interested in and sharing them with their community. People could join projects for as long as they were interested in them, and move on when they had nothing more to give.

Now those same hobby projects have grown into application sets which are beginning to displace some of the corporate offerings.

So what’s the revolution here? Software developed for free by people who care, is displacing software developed by faceless corporations seeking profit and market share. The greatest proof of this revolution is ironically not those who are embracing it, but those who’s business models are in danger.

For more than a decade the emphasis in the software industry has been on intellectual property. Business plans are built around keeping the intellectual property secret and selling the rights to use that property. So what happens when the intellectual property is developed and given away for free? Well for one, corporations that can’t deal with the change are going to falter. It won’t kill the market though, only change it. For the better? I don’t know, but it’s nice to speculate about a world where the IP is free and companies are forced to deliver better service.