CIO magazine has published this interesting article about Keith Curtis, a programmer with Microsoft for 11 years who’s left the company in 2004 and wrote a book about why Microsoft will fail.
According to Mr. Curtis, Microsoft’s model of building software is destined to fail because it doesn’t let software programmers cooperate and contribute, and thus stifles innovation.
The shape of things to come for Microsoft can be seen, for example in the adoption of the free Open Source Firefox browser which is technically superior to Internet Explorer.

This blog and website you are reading runs entirely on open source software: Apache webserver, running on top of the open source PHP scripting language connecting to a free open source MySQL backend database. This combination of free software is better and more flexible than anything Microsoft charges $$ for.

Eventually free open source software will take over the music software industry and this is already happening with free open source music software such as Supercollider, C-Sound, etc. or the hundreds of VST synths and effects plugins that are available for free.
Cylob, who used to record for Warp Records, built an entire sequencer, sampler and live playing system using Supercollider: The Cylob Music System