That's not to say that every new idea in software is germinating in the open-source world, but proprietary software is certainly being shunted aside in that regard, O'Grady adds.

The open-source inventions of today are aimed at solving specific problems businesses are encountering, particularly those born on the web, according to O'Grady.

Take Yahoo. When the search company ran into problems processing ever-larger reams of information, it came up with the open-source data processing framework.

"Consider, for example, whether Oracle ever would have been incented to invent something like Hadoop," he says. "The answer is probably no, because from a sales perspective, its potential impact would be negative. Yahoo, on the other hand, simply had a business problem to solve."

And now, proprietary vendors are ever more eager to hitch their wagons to open-source projects. Hadoop in particular is caught up in a virtual arms race, as companies, including Oracle roll out premium products and services that leverage the technology. Things are heating up in similar fashion for R, an open-source technology for statistical analysis long used by academics.