open-source fear (Score 1)

One big fear that won't be addressed until its too late is that "free as in beer" == "free as in freedom". In my experience people generally do not pay for what they can download/compile for free. If enough commercial products are eliminated from the marketplace because of competition from open-source (hence "free") software then there will be less money flowing from the consumer community into the developer community. There will be less jobs. There will be less pure software r&d money spent because of the increased risk of non-profitability. This means less money flowing from the business community into the developer community as well. Companies that make their money selling hardware will pick up some percentage of that slack but there's no incentive to pick up all of it. Big business has no loyalty to anyone but their shareholders.