Whenever I read articles or hear discussions about Linux’s ability to take over the desktop market, Whitney Houston’s song “The Greatest Love of All” comes to mind (actually, I think of Arsenio Hall’s–aka The Sexual Chocolates–rendition in the movie Coming to America). “Why?” You may ask. Because the children are the future in so many ways, but especially for Linux.

At the risk of sounding naive, I'm concerned about how members of the free and open source software (FOSS) community treat each other. No doubt in most parts of the community, people are getting things done while keeping civil. But, publicly, or when the big issues are raised, a sustained nastiness has crept into discussions over the last year or so.

The following are 5 ways that people misunderstand the concept of Free and Open Source Software.

About 150 representatives from 15 countries in Asia gathered at the Yen Center in Silang where they discussed developments in open source in a communal environment.

I was going over an old Groklaw posting that got me thinking about Microsoft and it’s .NET Agenda. I decided to do more research and took a look at the Comes vs Microsoft documents again but from the perspective of the current Mono issues. I am even more convinced that Mono and Moonlight do nothing but help Microsoft win against competing platforms.

Gentoo Linux has its problems. Gentoo once heralded the source-based distribution revolution, but in the second half of my time with gentoo, things went from bad to worse.

It's all over the intanut tubes. The endless fights between windows and Linux advocates never seem to end. Both factions accuse each other of being FUDmunsters and zealots and both factions defend their own actions aggressively.

These are full-featured cross-platform softwares, free as in beer and speech. Vivek Gite picks his best open source software of 2009.