I had no idea such a thng ever existed.

Ah. Those were the days.

Commandliine = Fun!

I think it's just a question of time until FOSS becomes the standard. In the old days books weren't available for everyone. Now you can go to a library and read/borrow most books without any restrictions. It's common cultural heritage. The same will happen to software (sooner or later).

Books weren't available for everyone in the old days because many didn't know how to read & write and not many books even existed. You can go to a library and read/borrow books but I fail to see the equivalent institution as far as software is concerned. Perhaps you will go somewhere, sit down at a computer, use <some program> and then leave (without taking the program home with you)? I don't see why "free" (as in beer) would ever become "the standard", unless companies find an alternative way to make money off their programs (i.e. other by selling them). Programmers need to be payed (even various Linux kernel programmers get payed to do what they do). I don't see why free (as in freedom) or open source software would become the norm since I don't see the vast majority of the population learning how to program and actually caring about these things.

how how?

I actually meant open source only, and a library as an equivalent of a free access to a program's source code, but fair enough - the book analogy is not the best one.

By Canonical, RedHat, Novell, Caldera, and the like.

How will FOSS be remembered?

What makes you think it will cease to exist?

As long as a single person in the whole world writes a program and lets everyone see the code, FOSS still exists!

And I highly doubt that proprietary software will one day kill FOSS for good.

Hey, even if FOSS is still around in 2050 (and I have a feeling that it probably will be ), how do you think that the FOSS of today would be seen by people in the future?

I still think the OP has an interesting question, even assuming that FOSS will never "die out".