Our first product, our flagship product, was heading quickly toward irrelevance. By putting control of the web browser into the hands of anyone who cared to step up to the task, we would ensure that those people would keep it going, out of their own self-interest. But that didn't happen. For whatever reason, the project was not adopted by the outside. Open source is most definitely not a panacea.
Software is hard.
The issues aren't that simple Zawinski concludes. In emerging markets, software competition is largely based upon each product's qualifications. Open Source is really not synonymous with free software, nor is it without conflicts nor are all upgrades incorporated into the system. The ultimate example is Linux itself. Creator Linus Torvalds has final say over all changes to the kernel of the popular open source clone of Unix.