Great ideas spring up every day, but only in certain conditions are they able to bloom. Open-source software is, in fact, one of the best places for these great ideas to bloom.

Not every proprietary program can drive a person crazy, right? Some, like Norton Ghost, are superb tools for anyone to use. But, the fact that these tools are proprietary can drive open source fanatics up a wall. It’s not the price of the software that makes the real difference (although it’s a reason to migrate from one software to another for many people); it’s the idea that proprietary software comes with boundaries that keeps the user experience confined to…well, being the user. That’s enough to drive any developer crazy.

Maybe because of JavaOne and Sun’s well-known concerns about open source profit the idea of proprietary hooks which make people pay for open source software is big again.

In the ongoing debate between open source purists and people who appreciate and defend proprietary software, extremists will always have their voices, but many people in the open source community are waking up to the fact that proprietary platforms and applications can co-exist peacefully with open source ones.

A great idea and applied well in time before Google finishes its Chrome operating system It just shows what a few people can achieve with open source software tools if they put their minds to it...

To be honest, for a couple of years now I have been pretty skeptical about the future of Free and Open Source software in Finnish schools and education sector in general. In Finland we have a lot of open source expertise and know-how. We have developers. I also assume that majority of the (liberally) higher educated people in Finland, at least know what is "Open Source" and "Linux".

Tim believes that open source, at least as defined by open-source licensing, has a short shelf life that will be consumed by Web 2.0 (i.e., Web companies hijacking open-source software to deliver proprietary Web services) or by traditional proprietary software vendors.

Your company's IT department probably depends on at least one open source application. The software does the job, is budget-friendly, and it has an active open source community which is constantly upgrading the application. But few applications are perfect, whether proprietary or open source.

It's easy for people who are skeptical of open source software to come up with a dozen reasons -- some perfectly valid -- to not give it a chance. Click2Try is a great way to try open source software in a virtual environment without the hassle of downloads and installation.