"The (Linux)project started in 1991 when a young programmer, Linus Torvalds, set out to design a computer operating system...Rather than proceeding alone, Torvalds posted his code to the Internet, inviting others to try it and, if they could, to improve it. By 1993, a growing, evolving network of Linux practitioners had built a remarkable operating system and myriad programs to run on it. By 2001, Linux had 20 million users and innumerable active developers. The project has draw the support of IBM, HP and Sun, and equally significantly, the enmity of Microsoft. Torvalds's most important contribution... is 'not technical but sociological.' Linux has used the Internet not simply as a network of bits, but as the resource for a network of practitioners to work collaboratively. (From the Preface of The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid