Closed src is to Open src as Capitalism is to... (Score 1)

This well researched article struck a chord with me.. As a recent graduate of a well known (in australia at least) software engineering course, the battle of open source vs closed source has plagued my mind for the past 6 months. Prior to this i had completed my thesis which invloved the development of (in my and my supervisors opinion) a very inovative piece of software for medical diagnosis. No sooner had i printed it than i was deluged with business liason offices, lecturers, and business interests asking me.. Why don't you comercialise this? What ever you do, don't publish acadmically because then you can't patent it! I'm sure i am not the first to say this, but to me, the open v close source debate draws so many parrallels with that of Capitalism Vs Communism ( / Socialism ). The old addage "communism is great in theory but lousy in practise" (which incidentally, many people use to justify their beliefs but have nothing but pop-culture-come-dogma to back it up) has some applicability when it comes to this question.. What should i do? A) Commercialise (keeping the source code secret), thus perhaps make money for myself, while prevent anyone from learning from my work, and destroying the chance of better diagnosis tools being produced based on it because the work no longer took my fancy. B) Publish (along with the source code), thus telling all-and-sundry about the work and paving the way for future development of a raft of diagnosis tools which i would never have had the time to develop. For me this translates seemlessly to:- A) Take the money and run (leaving both your cows and everyone else's to die of otherwise diagnosable diseases) B) Do what a real communist would do (Keep one of my cows: what i learned from the project, and give the other one to society). So what happened? B. But don't get me wrong.. Though ideolism runs strong through my young vains, would i have done the same if i had not been offered other work / had had two kids and a mortgage / had just had my cardboard box washed away by a tsunami? Who knows.. but as a programmer who inhabits a planet that is inhabited by millions of other programmers, i sincerly hope we all realise that what we decide affects more than just the quality of our games...