It's the hacker spirit on a gigantic scale. Now it is used by all kinds of people, and the proportion of Linux users who are programmers is steadily decreasing. Most of these non-programmers know very little about the traditions of the hacker culture. Many of them use Linux simply to make money, and it's just about the best thing that could have happened to the Open Source movement. People write closed-source applications because they believe they can make money renting them, and they will continue to believe this.
Companies write software for their own use, and want to guard their trade secrets.
It's great that programmers can create something like Linux in their spare time, but they also spend a lot of time at their paying jobs. Component development may be where the Open Source movement invades company time. Inc. I would like to thank my employer, CD Pubco in Calgary, for contributing time for me to work on this article. About this article Brian has been a software developer in Calgary's oil and gas industry since 1981. Brian first got into UNIX in 1991 but he has only been using Linux for about nine months.