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We can all argue about the greatest piece of software ever written. For me, it has always been the Linux compiler (tool-chain as we geeks call it) and the kernel - Linux. Most importantly, its the philosophy beautifully captured by GNU GPL.
On surface, many would name corporations - Microsoft, Google, IBM and others to reason that they accelerated technology adoption, and in many ways they did. I would argue that most of these companies were motivated by obvious outcomes prevalent at that time - create a monopoly, create profit, though their flowery mission statements might paint a different picture.( ahem, except Google obviously!!)
I would not try to capture the historical developments that went behind making this ecosystem of open source software successful, and sucess uimaginable, which today alomost single handidly has tested Capitalism to its limits. There are beauitiful narrations of this -
Linux, though most attributed to Linus Trowalds, is not the whole picture. Kernel is the core of it, but what made and still makes Linux is the software which made it possible, the tools - the gnu gcc compiler, the editors, the compiler language options, the whole developer feel of it.