If the recent history of the Net is considered, it is, in fact,
not easy to mobilise funding for the initial development of new
information exchanges. Commercially and government-funded entities entered
relatively late into the content and services market of the Net, long dominated
by academia and voluntary efforts of individuals. A look at newsworthy
examples such as Linux shows that such efforts can be easier to develop
and more viable than commercial funded efforts such as, say, IBM’s OS/2.
The flip side to this argument is, yes, excessive dependence on funding
for initial development could restrain, if not quite lock in, exchanges
from wider future growth.