Forcing Open Windows.

Can anyone compete with Microsoft in the world of software applications? For years now, Bill Gates & Co. have had clear sailing: the Windows operating-system monopoly has helped make their key products--like Word and Outlook--into unbeatable juggernauts. Meanwhile, innovation in those areas proceeds only at the pace that Microsoft deems appropriate.

The Open Source Applications Foundation has a different idea: to promote free software and innovation by creating cool new applications on a bare-bones budget. The not-for-profit OSAF was initially funded with $5 million from former Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitch Kapor. For Kapor, this is a fascinating departure. Twenty years ago he introduced one of the first killer apps of the PC age, the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet; it was unabashedly for-profit and was closed-source, a la Microsoft.

But Kapor always had his heart in the counterculture, and after leaving his company he cofounded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyberrights organization. Though he has seen success as an investor, he feels strongly about the open-source movement, which posits that in the age of complex software many people working for nothing can duplicate or even exceed the efforts of the rake-in-the-bucks gang. And because the source code is available to all, anyone can improve the product. The continued success of the Linux-powered operating system and Apache Web servers shows that open source is no hippie-dippy pipe dream, but a serious challenge to the establishment.

Sometime next year the OSAF will begin testing its first product, a personal-information ...