The fact is that, in a production environment, Linux is NOT a free solution. There are costs associated with every solution and the relative cost of any solution is dependent upon many factors. In the end, no solution will serve all needs, nor will any solution, by itself, prove to be dramatically more cost-effective than another.

In my view, the speed with which the IBM 'Microsoft-Free PC' is coming to market is very questionable. Does it really take more than a year to put together a solution from components that already exist in the market?

"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution.

The EU Commission and Microsoft have settled the browser choice issue, and the Commission will continue to monitor interoperability issues, with Microsoft posting a new and "improved" set of documents today about interoperability.

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --

The EU Commission and Microsoft have done a draft of a deal. Lunch, anyone? They will do market testing of the browser screen for a while. And they have worked out a kind of draft solution on interoperability standards. Both solutions are working off of two suggestions Microsoft proposed itself. Here's Microsoft's statement...

RMS (Zagreb on March 9th 2006): "... Many people suggest a two stage solution. They say, first, let's teach people to use Free Software, and then, once they're using it, we'll teach people to appreciate the freedom.

"...For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.” For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution.

Is MySQL free in a free-market? With the European Commission's ongoing investigation, a debate over what makes free software free has emerged, ironically, centred on how money is made from free software.