The basic idea behind open source is very simple. When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves.
People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs.
Open Source Initiative exists to make this case to the commercial world. It's a central part of our engineering tradition, part of our working method almost by instinct. It's how we made the Internet work. This paper was behind Netscape's pioneering decision to take its client software open-source. We all know how astonishingly reliable the running gears of the Internet are relative to their nearest commercial equivalents.