Since its launch three years ago, Mozilla's Firefox web browser has shown the world that open-source software can challenge the establishment.
According to data from Net Applications, an online market analysis house, Firefox now holds about 15% of the browser market, second to Microsoft Internet Explorer's 79%.
But Mitchell Baker, the chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Mozilla Corporation, says Firefox is predominantly about promoting a healthy and open internet where no company or individual holds a monopoly on innovation.
Ms Baker is in Sydney for the CeBIT technology trade fair and says the internet is in a constant state of change with few guarantees that anything we see today will still be around tomorrow.
"I think the software world is changing pretty dramatically so I think there's a bunch of commercial models that might not survive either," Ms Baker said.
"Open-source is certainly part of that flux."
Mozilla Corporation is the taxable subsidiary of the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, which supports the development of free open-source software such as Firefox and the Thunderbird email application.
The open-source component means the creator permits the use and modification of the software's program code, allowing users to adapt the application to their specific needs or suggest changes to the author.
While the product is free for download, Firefox generates revenue through agreements with a number of search engines, which have embedded search applications in the browser.
Ms Baker was involved in the development of Netscape Navigator, one of the first browsers to be mass-marketed in the mid-1990s.
She says after a short era of closed operation around 2000 where most internet applications were developed by large software companies, the "user-focused" web has again emerged as a powerful force.
"We went into a long period of dormancy where nothing happened where the Mozilla project was busy trying to create ultimately Firefox," she said.
"It took a long time to actually get that product right.
"Now we're back in a stage where enough people recognise the browser to actually make a difference to the internet and are once again starting to do innovative and interesting things in the browser."
Such innovations include tabbed browsing - which allows users to have more than one page open at a time on a single window - and better malware and spam filtration.
But users should not take the internet's current state of openness for granted.
"The web is a piece of infrastructure that is incredibly deep in value and there's a lot of rational business reasons to try and close off a part of it to create value for your customers," Ms Baker said.
"We want to be a voice that says there is an alternative but I think that's not guaranteed either."
