Crisis: an opportunity for Open Source?

In the past 100 years the Developed World had to face two big crises: first was the Great Depression in 1929-30, and the second was the Oil Crisis in the 1970's. A big crisis seem to happen about each 40 years, so the things happening now were historically probable.

Big crises always brought the collapse of an old Economic System, and helped the rise of a new one. For example, the years of 1930's and 40's brought the mass spread of electricity and oil (and less demand for horses), on which was the western society so dependent in the 70's, that the radical growth in the prices of energy sources caused the next crisis. The great achievments of the 70's and 80's were energy-saving machines and miniaturisation. In fact, it happened in the 80's that computing became available for the masses.

The dot-com bubble in the begginning of the 2000's could be a warning: something is in change. The structure of the economy has also changed slowly in the background, the small and medium enterprises have bigger and bigger roles. Serious changes happened in the IT sector as well: computers became devices for connection with other people rather than devices for computing. Of course, its former functions are also in use, but nowadays a PC without internet isn't worth too much.

My opinion is that a clever businessman shouldn't lament much over the situation, and try to conservate the old rules. He should instead, plan for the era after the crisis. Because the end of a thing usually means the beginning of a new thing. It's noticeable that most of the things that are determinative factors after a crisis are present also before it, but they weren't able to expand widely in the circumstances of the old system. There had to be chaos again for their success (the mammals were the superior beings, but they couldn't rule the world while the dinosaurs existed).

How will the New Economy look like? I could only guess. But if it's true that IT was the leading sector of economy in the past 20-30 years, then - because history can repeat only itself - the main changes should happen in this field. Maybe it will bring us the mass spread of Open Source.