"It seems Microsoft has contributed some money to the Apache Foundation. Unbelievable? [...] And, finally? Of course, they transform into a Free Software company. Which they will have to do, in any case. And with the money and user base they have, they can easily drive the others, such as Red Hat and SuSE out of business or at least become the dominant FS company. Not likely? Who can say?

It has been said there is no such thing as a 'true' Free Software business. Blue GNU interviewed the Ada Core Technologies team to learn about the company that has been a 'true' Free Software business for over 20 years.

Socially responsible investing begs the question: Is it financially viable? The same question arises with regard to free, or open source, software. Free software is clearly beneficial to society, but is it good for business?

Anna Morris is co-founder of FLOSSIE conference for women in Free Software, Manchester Fellowship Group Deputy Coordinator, and Co-Director of ethical-pets.co.uk. She is currently writing a book on video editing with Free Software, and volunteering with Document Freedom Day 2013 in her spare time.

She talks about running her e-commerce company with Free Software tools.

"I am a supporter and user of free software (though I admit I have not migrated entirely). I research and write about the social movement aspect of free software, and its potential as a model for alternative social organization beyond the realm of software development. I am inspired by the future envisioned by free software and take heart from its existence here and now.

Every company is in the software business, which means that every company has software liability. We estimate $11.4 billion a year is spent on software patent litigation (see our resources for economists page), and not just by Microsoft and IBM—The Green Bay Packers, Kraft Foods, and Ford Motor are facing software patent infringement lawsuits for their use of the standard software necessary for running a modern business.

For me, the hardest part about teaching the LPI 101 course is teaching about text-stream filters. It’s not that they’re difficult to understand. It’s just that showing the examples of how they work is easy, but showing examples of how they can be used in real life is a bit more challenging.

We are often told that the best things in life are free, but few have ever tried to build it into a business model. Yet it is curious that while financial capitalism is in global meltdown, a completely different kind of entrepreneurial activity - call it commune-ism - is rising, from an admittedly low base.

While the vast majority of the its apps are closed source they will not help spread real user freedom, or offer much of an alternative to Apple's tightly-controlled approach. The free software community needs to address these problems by encouraging many more developers to build great Android apps that are truly free.