If in ten years time Linux held the OS monopoly and MS was bancrupt, would Linux remain open source, or will it follow in the footsteps of capitalism and be closed source? I expect a lot of competition from different distros, but will we still be able to download new distros of Linux for free?
I know that people are already buying suse versions in shops, but when there is so much money to be made in making your software closed source when you have a monopoly, why would developers let people download free distros?

the GNU does not alow for the source to be closed or sold. the only thing ppl paying for suse are paying for NOW is the service and the book that comes with it.

so yes it will always stay open, and the base of it will stay free.

Linux has existed "in the wild" for several years now and therefore the only way it could become closed source would be to have everyone who's already using it to uninstall it, and then buy it back again from a commercial entity. I see no way this would happen.

If people want to make money in Linux, it won't be from simply charging for the core OS, it would be from charging for consulting services, custom programming, etc. -- J.W.

I bet it will be harder to do it for free when linux has the monopoly. Maybe you will have to stick with minor distributions or build your system up from the ground to get it for free.

If it ever does become a monopolised joke like M$ there will always be other OS's that fill the gap.

If Linux takes over and closes its source, I would turn to FreeBSD or similar solutions.

I am fairly confident, however, that Linux, the very essence of open source software, would not turn its back on the community it has created.

doesnt linus come from a stong proud comunist background...
wouldnt his dad send him to bed without supper if he allowed linux to become a capitalist product ?

I think Open Source will last and thrive. I am going to have to check into FreeBSD that I have been seeing so many people mention. It's Unix isn't it?

I was sure Linux aswell as FreeBSD was based on Unix till today.

Linux is UNIX-like, not UNIX based. It does much of what UNIX does, but its actual code has no roots in UNIX. BSD, however, is UNIX-based.

Linux History

I agree with you here, absolutely. In fact, it's too late to make it closed source; a new OS would have to be invented. And yes, much as I was unaware when I first joined here FreeBSD is Unix, and also the Basis for Mac OS X

But some independent developers can change the policy?
for example:
Samba developers can change from GPL to a close policy? Is this possible?

Open source software doesn't rely on the GPL. FreeBSD is also open source and they use a completely different license. For that matter, there's no reason you couldn't create proprietary/commercial open source software. Open source will last because it's the most efficient way to distribute software for different platforms -- compiling the code specifically for the target system rather than distributing a different binary package for each architecture and OS, that is. The GPL and GNU I'm not so sure about. Oh BTW, you don't need to call FreeBSD GNU/FreeBSD either.

If a software is distributed under GNU is possible hgis licence change to something else?

If GNU=GPL, this is possible only by the original author as far as I know. It gets increasingly more difficult as more GPL software is merged from various sources.

Open source is next to impossible to stop, as the source of current projects is already available. If a license is changed, it can affect only future releases. Additionally, there will always be developers writing code because they want to instead of doing it for profit.