Challenge: Open source as standard by 2008

The challenge here is to create a world where open source software standards are more popular than propretry alternatives by the present time. I don't just mean the obvious ones (Linux, Openoffice, Mozilla etc.) but all sorts of things. (Maybe make OGG Vorbis more popular than MP3? -it is alleged according to Wikipedia to be of better quality.) This scenario still permits the availability of some propretry software, shareware and closed-source freeware.

What is going to be necessary? (probabily involves cutting Microsoft down to size for one or at least making Windows less popular- but my idea is not primarily to turn this into an anti-Microsoft wank!)

What will existing software look like?

Bonus points to anyone who can find a way for open-source standards to be more popular for other media (e.g. Creative Commons for music etc.)

Or does this require ASB intervention?
 
An earlier open source movement, combined with Microsoft acquiring and improving DOS at a later date and slower pace and Apple not being as popular, would probably do the trick
 
make GNU have a good kernel and a good GUI at an earlier date, make apple a bit more popular(so that less windowsers claim that everybody else is using it) and that'd make open source software somewhat more mainstream.but not the standard.Or if microsoft makes something like WGA at an earlier date and makes it have more side effects etc. and we can have GNU almost as popular as windose.
Making it standard might require some kind of ASB involvement i think
 
Speed up the development of the Internet or its predecessor systems (Usenet, various services like CompuServe or GEnie, Minitel, whatever). Open Source has benefited a lot from the ability to download and upload both source files and executables.

The first major open source program to be developed in a large "online" system was the ASCII dungeon game now known as NetHack, which started development around 1986-7. Its no coincidence that its one of the few games still being played and developed for after more than 20 years, with numerous forks and extensions such as GUI interfaces. Its by no means the first "Open Source" project - BSD and EMACS if nothing else date to the 1970s - but the internet helps a lot, especially as non-software-developers won't see the point for open source if you have to pay money to get a disk in the mail.

Faster development of an "AT&T-royalty-free" version of BSD would also help. Most of BSD UNIX has been under permissive licensing (that's open source, but without the GPL's "copyleft" preventing closed-source use) since 1981ish, but you had to have a valid AT&T UNIX license to legally use BSD before around 1993 - by which point, its too late to make any BSD variant majority-use by 2000 and in any case Linux is well into development by that point.

One major problem is, Microsoft's abuses are a major reason open source has become commonplace in the first place. Windows NT, for example, usually did not replace open source installations, but systems like VMS or commercial UNIX variants like IBM AIX, SunOS/Solaris, HP-UX, or even Microsoft's own XENIX - but anger at Microsoft's own policies has helped drive Linux's success. Without Microsoft's heavy-handedness, the open source movement may be smaller and limited to people like Richard Stallman (the dedicated or the insane, take your pick:p).
 
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