It took 70 years to produce the first edition of the OED, and without the postal system it would not have been possible. So now you have this new communications medium, which is the Internet and which is fast. And which also has the benefit that when I send you a piece of data, I keep that piece of data myself. Suddenly you have zero cost transmission of information and zero loss to yourself when you transmit the information. This allows things like open source and collaboration to happen.
Software has to be fairly ubiquitous for it to succeeed in certain cases.
They know how to use Microsoft Word. They don't know how to use Word Perfect, necessarily. So suddenly you can't charge for software. Actually, there are a number of companies that have done quite nicely and are doing quite nicely by charging for software. Microsoft comes to mind.