With any paradigm shift, it is difficult to see the new world
from the old one, even though it is glaringly obvious once
you've crossed over. Empirical evidence is one way to bridge the
gap. Let's look at some solid evidence for the success of what
is probably the most obvious "impossible" achievement of
commons-based peer production: free software, as exemplified by
the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. First, of course, we need to
start with the myth, promulgated by a couple of decades of
proprietary software dominance with an economic model founded an
the manufacturing analogy: "Free software development can create
simple programs and utilities, but it's useless for anything
large scale" This may seem almost comic in the pages of Free
Software Magazine, but I still hear this myth spouted by
otherwise intelligent people in other communities. It's such a
strongly held belief because it is all that conventional wisdom
allows for works created by "amateurs" in their "spare time".
The professionalist belief is tha