As for licensing, I have to say that which license to use depends on what you need it for. The BSD style licenses are much more business friendly than GPL, but both have their place. Don’t hate the BSD license…they wrote it specifically so their system could be a springboard for other systems. The fact that companies are not required to contribute code changes back to the parent project or the community does not seem to have stopped innovation or code commits to any of the projects you mentioned, either.

Just to make a point…say I develop a program that I need a database for. I can chose to pay license fees that will drive up the cost of the product for a proprietary one, build my own (which will drive up the labor hours, and the cost, for no really good benefit), or I can chose a free one that is community tested. These DBs were written for things like that…so the wheel doesn’t have to be reinvented a million times over or be vastly overpriced. Now, two of my choices are MySQL, which as a GPLed program will require me to release my own code, and PostgreSQL, which as a BSD license I only have to attribute the original creators. Since I’ve spent a lot of labor hours on this project and I really want to see return on my investment, and don’t reasonably think I can recoup the costs using support based open source models, which option do you think has just become more inviting?

I think RMS is a great free software advocate in that he never abandons the cause…and a terrible one because he believes his way is the only way. I in no way hate freedom or free software…I love it. I do not, however, think it is immoral or unethical to make money on and keep as a trade secret the software I develop…and he thinks it is, and has said as much.

Open Source and Closed Source software both have their place, and the BSD type licenses allow them to co-exist. I do not see this as a bad think at all, and the companies that take advantage of these are not inherently evil.

It’s funny, but I never remember it crashing or locking up. Later during the Home Computer craze of the 80s I recall my system was stable and the software always seemed to work, Word Processor, Games, etc.

Today, people suffer so much distress using their Microsoft based computer system that gaming really isn’t very popular on the machines even though they certainly have the processing power to handle the task, they DEFINITELY lack the ability create stable games that truly are fun ..for very long, before the horrid system takes the fun away.

Folks flock to dedicated “game” computer devices because the systems Microsoft monopolized weren’t stable enough to maintain the fun. Sooner or later distressing crashes, renewal notices, trail-ware expiration notices, signing 20 page license agreements without any idea what was signed, much less even making an attempt to read it, viral alerts, security alert pop-ups, and so forth ..and the joy is soon greatly diminished.

Work is painfully popular on Microsoft based systems because work is just that, it’s work, it’s not supposed to a “fun” or “joyful” experience, or at least that’s the notion and we end up tolerating it.

Folks chore away within their Microsoft paradigm constantly battling the clutter and pop-ups demanding that they renew whatever expired, or re-subscribe to some additional that shouldn’t need in the first place. It interferes with their work but since its a chore, they tolerate it.

One thing people will not tolerate is Trying to Have Fun / Joy (playing a game on PC) because when they discover it turns out to not be so much or satisfaction battling the constant headaches on their machine, they decide not to re-attempt to have that fun any longer (playing a game on PC). Eventually, sooner or later, they don’t seek to have “fun” on their PC anylonger… just like the California gold miners eventually gave up after the gold ran dry, PC gamers, like gold miners panning for gold and never getting much in return, decide to look elsewhere or do something different. On a PC that would usually be “I’ll do more work instead”

The Personal Computer paradigm is definitely a chore ..or worse yet, for many its an outright battle they despise with intensity. That’s why after purchases PC games for a couple of years, year ago, I finally that by far, most of my money was wasted, having yielded very little fun. Thanks Microsoft for all you’ve contributed to the computer world!!

Without Microsoft we probably would have a world with productivity on computing devises, its just that we wouldn’t have many of those annoyances:

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What’s considered the MOST open: Xfce, GNOME or KDE? I had always thought of GNOME first.

GNOME gets $20,000. Will the money influence their decision making process? With LiMO on the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board I will guess they are going to be undermining Freedom to Share and Responsibility to Contribute with Freedom to Exploit and You Give, We Take, and We Don’t Share what we put together using your input. I consider the $20,000 contribution like a political contribution. They give the GNOME bird the money and then demand, “Walk and quack like a duck”.

GNOME, We don’t want a Duck, We want a Penguin

The freedom haters I’m talking about regularly bash free software in general. Dehumanizing RMS because he wants to prevent them from taking volunteer code and making it proprietary. They want Freedom #5, the freedom to exploit volunteers for proprietary gains. They love MIT, BSD, Apache, X11 because those licenses allow them to lock code away and prevent the users from having the changes.