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to make its product evolve precisely along the lines that users want. Of course,
it will have the advantage of better knowledge of the program, but that isn't
all. They will have to compete for every client.
Therefore, the appearance of dominant products in the world of free software,
translates into more competition between companies. And with it users retake
control: companies in competition cannot do anything but listen to them if
they want to survive. And this is precisely what will make sure that the product
improves.
Free products that are dominant in their sector
For a long time, Apache has been the leader in the market for web servers. But there are
many companies behind Apache, from some very large ones (like IBM) to other much
smaller ones. And all of them have no other choice but to compete by improving it and
normally by contributing to the project with their improvements. Despite the fact that
Apache is almost a monopoly in many fields (for example, it is almost the only web
server considered on the GNU/Linux or *BSD platform), it does not depend on a single
company, but rather on literally dozens of them.
The distributions of GNU/Linux are also an interesting case. GNU/Linux is not, certainly,
a monopoly, but is possibly the second choice in the market for operating systems. And
this has not forced a situation whereby one company has control over it. On the contrary
there are tens of distributions made by different companies, which freely compete in the
market. Each one of them tries to offer improvements, which its competitors have to
adopt at the risk of being left out. Moreover, they cannot stray too far from what is the
"GNU/Linux standard", since this would be rejected by users as a "departure from the
norm ". The situation after several years of a growing market share for GNU/Linux shows
us tens of companies that compete and allow the system to evolve. And once again, all
of them pursue satisfying users' requirements. This is the only way that they can stay
in the market.
GCC is a dominant product in the world of C and C++ compilers for the GNU/Linux
market. And yet, this has not led to any company monopoly situation, even though Cygnus
(now Red Hat) was responsible for a long time for coordinating its development. There
are many companies that make improvements to the system and all of them compete,
each in their specific niche, to satisfy their users' demands. In fact, when a specific company
or organisation has failed in the task of coordinating (or some users have perceived
this to be the case) there has been room for the project to fork, with two products running
in parallel for a while, until they have come back together again (as is now happening
with GCC 3.x).
5.4.4. Strategies for becoming a monopoly with free software
Despite the fact that the world of free software is much more hostile to busi-
ness monopolies than the world of proprietary software, there are strategies
that a company can use to try to approach a situation of monopolistic domi-
nance of a market. These practices are common in many other economic sec-
tors and in order to prevent them we have bodies that regulate competition,
which is why we will not go into too much detail about them. However, we
will mention one that, up to a point, is specific to the software market, and
which has already been experienced in certain situations: the acceptance of
third party product certification.
When a company wishes to distribute a software product (free or proprietary)
that functions in combination with others, it is common to "certify" that pro-
duct for a certain combination. The manufacturer undertakes to offer services
(updates, support, problem-solving, etc.) only if the client guarantees that the