Whatever kind of question it is does not change the risk involved in trying to profit from software, or any product for that matter. I would argue that the time invested to write the software is the same for either case. You are also gambling that someone will want to pay for your closed source software.

You asked a marketing question that I don't really know how to answer. I make a full time living as a contractor developing and maintaining free open source software. All of my revenue comes from companies who find my code useful and are willing to pay for access to my talent to add features, fix bugs, give support, etc. I am not listed in the phone book, I don't pay for any advertising, etc. Free stuff gets around quickly and people seek me out.

Distribution is only part of it. The freedom to modify software that you rely on to perform your task better is what is at stake. Just like you have the freedom to modify your car to perform better.

Free as in free to turn you car in to a hot rod and re-sell it to someone else if you feel like it. Closed source software is a car with the hood welded shut that you aren't allowed to fix if the engine dies, or resell if you need the money to buy movie tickets.

Its kind of like owning a luxury car. You still get from A to B, but you feel better than everyone else because you wasted your money.

I don't get spam from Chase, but a ton from Capital One. Is that the one you meant?

and switching to a more reputable corporate behemoth like... hrmm... like... uhhh... doh!

The military has laws which make it very illegal to do what Manning allegedly did. At the time he allegedly released the documents, he was sworn to obey those laws. Assuming for a moment that he is indeed guilty, he should have to pay the price for his actions. As for whether or not his act was noble, that is for history to decide. Most heros pay a high price to earn that label. Often the price is their life.

The title is so misleading. There is still a Ruby bundle for Netbeans 7.0. In fact you can download the beta now. What happened is they decided to stop paying employees to work on it and are handing it over to the community.

There is a huge downside to being in the $1 club. When Jobs hits 65, his Social Security check is going to suck!

Nobody has ever lay on their death bed and uttered with their final breath, "I wish I had more money."

Its pretty obvious that you don't have kids.

Unless your mom is your lawyer... and if that is the case, you have bigger problems than the FBI like having to sign a 12 page lease for the basement, and getting sued for leaving the seat up.

I hope there is an option to disable this in case your account is hacked and someone wants to download all of your data, oh wait, doh....

The argument in the article against using HTML5 due to interoperability issues with older browsers makes zero sense. No matter how much time passes, all of the new features of HTML5 will be broken in IE6 and the like. If on the other hand they are arguing that HTML5 breaks HTML4 features of IE6, then holy crap is the W3C incompetent. Am I missing something here? Other than that, the article reads like a Silverlight advertisement, so...