> Billions have been wasted rewriting the same code (at times in roundabout ways) just to avoid copyLEFT restrictions!

Billions have been wasted rewriting the same code (at times in roundabout ways) just to avoid proprietary restrictions, too. People who want to use copyleft code only have to release their changes, it's not such a big deal...
From the point of view of the software ecosystem, I'd say that the GNU toolchain has given birth to what I consider the most successful open-source project ever, namely Linux (probably a billion-dollar success overall), mostly under the GPL. From an industrial point of view, copyleft hasn't harmed Google too much, and Apple is definitely not a model for free software.

> I think that free and transparent will prevail, that is Google Scholar.

I agree about the free part, but "transparent"? Not really. How do you know what's in GS or not? How do you correct inaccurate data when you notice it? There are so many questions about the under-the-hood working of GS that I'd like to ask...

Because the most offending importer belongs to the same parent company as the main French publishing company.

> Tolkien actually enjoyed hard sf, especially Asimov

Huh? Could you please tell us your evidence for this? I was under the impression (based on JRRT's letters and novels) that he wasn't too keen on technology and the so-called modern world. So I have some difficulty imagining him interested in a distant future filled with spaceships and robots.

> Publishing articles nowadays is terribly easy and does not cost a thing (arxiv)

Note that this is no longer accurate: Arxiv is now asking universities worldwide for donations. It isn't a mandatory license fee and it only amounts to a handful of commercial journal subscriptions, but it is no longer "not a thing".

> Some UN fixes I can think of are 1) t 1) the invasion of Normandy in 1942 and the subsequent war in Europe against Germany

Sorry, but huh?
- the invasion of Normandy took place in 1944. There was a raid on the city of Dieppe in 1942, performed by Canadian forces under British command, but it was a complete failure.
- the United Nations didn't really exist until 1945, at which time they mostly meant "the WW2 winners"

What does it have to do with the UN?

In case it wasn't sarcasm but genuine surprise, yes, there are such beasts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_science

Doen't string theory (supposed to be predicting the behavior of spacetime at very high energies as far as could understand from popular science books) claim that there are more dimensions than the 4 we observe, rather than less? I'm confused...

Smartphones are only one generation away from achieving console-like performance. Counting in IT generations that's what, 2 years? Sony should be worried.

Not to mention the peer referees who were supposed to review the manuscript before it was accepted for publication...

> Google Scholar is the most comprehensive index of scholarly articles in the world, period.

You can't possibly know that, as Google doesn't tell us exactly what's covered by GS.

> Not only are there no free alternatives, there are no alternatives at all.

Wrong. The Web of Knowledge and Scopus (commercial) and Scirus (free) are perfectly valid alternatives. Furthermore, a number of studies in various fields have shown that all of these tools, as well as GS, usually return a number of hits that were not found by the others (again, including GS). Therefore, they can always be seen as complementing each other.

What you cound argue, on another hand, is that GS offers the best quality/price ratio. I for one would accept that.