As computers first began to become larger parts of our personal and business lives we became used to purchasing our software from a store and installing it on the hard drivers of our personal computers. With the introduction of the internet we began to use tools designed and built by software professionals that allowed us to communicate with individuals and groups and allowed us to easily distribute content and media in real time. With the rise of DIY website platforms, Social Network platforms, and PaaS and Software Development platforms have made it so that small and medium businesses can put up their own website, any organization can easily spin up a custom designed public or private social network, and single individual could design and distribute an original piece of software to millions of people without knowing a single line of code or owning a single web server.

Compared to traditional software development this trend is in its infancy, but already the industry is beginning to de-centralized. It is now so affordable to design, build, and maintain your own software web sites and social networks that many more companies can maintain their own in-house development department instead of using a software firm. Even more extreme many large and complex organizations may soon find that they lack any clear need for a development department at all.

DIY Website platforms provide an entry level presence for small and medium sized businesses and individuals with non-tehnical backgrounds. Social Netwokrs allow companies and especially organizations to create vibrant online communities or augment their existing sites with community features. PaaS providers and Software Development platforms allow small to medium sized organizations and even individuals to create, host, and serve robust applications of any type to large numbers of people without any expensive physical infrastructure or intense technical training. The coming change will cause a large shift from a few major players to thousands of small, agile, and innovative players. The economics of the industry will be changed entirely and 10 years from now a major software development company could be comprised of just a few key players living thousands of miles apart.

The seed of this paradigm shift can be found in the origins of the internet and the growth of the Open Source Movement that has parralleled the internet's rise. The Open Source Community was one that saw that software developed specifically to be controlled and profited from is not the only kind of software that should exist. Indeed in an ironic twist of fate the tenets of Open Source development, the free sharing of information and the adoption of common standards, is what has facilitated the frantic growth of this industry.