[rwl]

> it's more about improving quality and keeping costs down.

Yes. This point seems to be lost on the author of the article. Even the founders of the Open Source movement thought that.

I can't find it now, but I remember once reading an essay by Bruce Perens where he pointed out that the vast majority of software that's written lives on the cost side, not the revenue side, of a company's balance sheet, because the vast majority of software that's written is custom in-house software. If you can share those costs with others who have similar needs, everyone benefits.

As a kid who had only ever thought of software as "something you have to pay for when you want a copy for your computer", this was eye-opening for me. The idea that the software I was familiar with was the exception, rather than the rule, made it plausible that there were other ways to get high-quality software through besides paying a license fee to Microsoft. As a result, I found that idea very attractive.