Veteran Linux programmer Lars Wirzenius talks about the early days of Linux which, in due course, would change the world. This article is from 2023, but there are many pearls of wisdom in it for those interested in COSS:

In the spring of 1994 we felt that Linux was done. Finished. Nothing more to add. One could use Linux to compile itself, to read Usenet, and run many copies of the xeyes program at once… In the following years, many things happened. It turned out that there were still a few missing features from Linux, so people worked on those. The term “open source” was coined and IBM invested a ton of money in Linux development. Netscape published a version of its web browser as open source. Skipping a few details and many years, open source basically took over the world.

In a rapidly changing world, the only constant is innovation. No matter what, there is always room to innovate.

Wirzenius also mentions an early license change that would allow Linux to flourish in the succeeding decades:

The first releases of Linux used a license that forbade commercial use. Some of the early contributors suggested a change to a free-software license. In the fall of 1991, Richard Stallman visited Finland and I took Linus to a talk given by Stallman. This, the pressure from contributors, and my nagging eventually convinced Linus to choose the GNU GPL license instead, in early 1992.

This decision would allow Linux to become what it is today. If it hadn’t been for this license change, COSS enterprises like Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, and others might never have come into existence and brought Linux into the mainstream.

The story of Linux reminds us that a win for COSS is a win for the open source movement as a whole.