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http://www.indianpad.com/view.php?id=510
(Not much more to say... view it or not)

After 10 years at Microsoft with less than "10 minutes with any Open Source code till I left Microsoft-which is actually very typical for MS employees.", this expat left Microsoft and spent a year using Linux (mostly Umbutu). It was a bit of a shock. To be precise, he "had an epiphany that Linux on the desktop is 99.999% ready to go. Linux is lean, stable, polished and extremely rich. All of the pieces needed for world domination on the desktop are there."

His back of the envelope calculation is that Linux is about 10,000 bugs away from being fully world-domination ready -- or about 50 man-years -- and some of those bugs are due to lack of support from device manufacturers.

The head of the RIAA has mentioned that Sony isn't the only company putting malware onto their CDs. The question, then, is: Should we be using Sony as a beachhead to get the public up in arms about what the media companies are doing, and planning to do with our privacy, viewing rights and purchaser rights?

Groklaw has a nice deconstruction of the recent FOX FUD about The Commonwealth of Massachusetts' decision to move to an OpenDoc standard. The fud takes the form of an editorial by James Prendergast, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, the organization that was responsible for sending microsoft-friendly 'grassroots' letters to Utah's then Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

The letter spouts the usual Microsoft-campaign FUD about the decision purportedly locking out 'market forces' (read: Microsoft, who is threatening to not support the format), costing the Commonwealth more money (ignoring the cost of updating to Office-Vista) and various other pieces of half-truth and misdirection.

For those who are interested, I also have my own rant on evaluating Microsoft Office by Microsoft's own criterion.

In comments about the SCO/IBM lawsuit, some people keep bringing up that IBM's history as a 'good corporate' citizen is (at best) spotty, and that we may not be well off to depend on them as the front man for the Open Source/GNU community. This is far from being a trivial point.

Back in the '70s, when IBM ruled the mainfraim computer world like Microsoft now rules the PC Computer world, they pretty much invented the idea of using FUD to keep customers in place. Richard Stallman's principles on closed source as a weapon to use against your customers arose in the context of (and probably in response to) IBM's treatment of customers and rivals... A treatment that is echoed in Microsoft's activities today.

Is IBM a paragon of the Open/Free Source movements? no. On the other hand to the extent to which they take on, accept, and promote the principles of the Open/Free Source communities, they should be encouraged to continue doing so. The should also be discouraged from activities at odds with our principles.

The thing here is to not depend on IBM to carry the Open Source community. Just about any corporation is the the equivalent of a meta-psychopath. It's the nature of the legal entity. We can be thankfull that SCO has decided to fire the first big volley of the Open Source war at IBM -- a company quite capable of absorbing and returning that kind of fire. We can also use that situation to our advantage, but that shouldn't stop us from holding IBM to account if (and when) they violate Open and Free Source principles

This is where the US fell down with the US and Osamma. The USA allowed, supported and even trained these people to do things that were against the (overt) principles of the country. The CIA trained Osamma in the terrorist tactics that he's now using against the west -- they knew that he was a psychopath when they did it. It could be said that that's why they traind him. They also provided much of Iraq's WMD technology. During that same period, the US gave only the most tepid support to Nobel Laurates and other advocates of peacefull tactics and human rights. Then, the US ignored international law and widespread disagreement in chosing the timetable and terms of an invasion of Iraq. Given that history, it's no surprise that the US is now mired in a nasty and violent uprising against them. Few people in Iraq trust the US's motives and tactics, and rightly so.

You very much reap what you sow. To that end, I agree with SUN questioning RedHat on the "openness" if their most recent corporate tactics. I may com to a different conclusion, but I agree with asking the quesiton. It's important that we don't lose sight of our principles in promoting our goals. The fact that one corporation or another is the current darling of the Open Source / Free Source communities shouldn't stop us from questioning them about things that they are doing that go against our principles.

"What good does it do to gain the whole world if you lose your soul" applies as much much in the social and political world as it does in the personal/religious world. The "souls" being spoken of may be very different in the two contexts, but the principle remains sound.