[dbdjfjrjvebd]

It mainly would not exist. Or if it did it would be very different.

[rimliu]

What makes you think someone else would not step in instead? There was a similar argument when Ritchie died: "we would not have C, we would not have software". Well, maybe we would not have C, but for sure we would have (and already had) some other programming languages.

[mbrodersen]

Most open source software wouldn't exist if it wasn't for proprietary software succesfully showing there is a market for it.

[Godel_unicode]

This is falling prey to the great man theory of history. How can you know that nobody else would have championed FOSS if not for him?

There are lots of FOSS advocates who were turned off to the whole movement because of him; what might they have done with him absent?

[lidHanteyk]

Sure, "copy-center" attitudes like those common in BSD communities would have prevailed, likely, and we'd have entered the shared-source/commons-licensing phase a decade earlier. Without the option of copyleft, an entire pillar of philosophy would be missing, but it likely would not matter, since the world would still be just as corporatist. The main thing missing in that world would be a belief that copyright can and will be changed in order to better suit the people.

[rimliu]

I am still not getting that someone else would not come up with these or better ideas.