No matter what strides the new generation of open-source companies make, they all owe a big debt to Linus Torvalds. In 1991 the Finnish programmer started Linux as a project at the University of Helsinki. Fourteen years later the reverberations are still being felt. Thanks to support from giant companies such as Dell Computer (DELL ) and IBM (IBM ), Linux is now commonplace on big corporate servers — posting 11 consecutive quarters of growth, according to market researcher IDC.
Link: Business Week
