"Every generation has its philosopher — a writer or an artist who captures the imagination of a time. Sometimes these philosophers are recognized as such; often it takes generations before the connection is made real. But recognized or not, a time gets marked by the people who speak its ideals, whether in the whisper of a poem, or the blast of a political movement.

"...In the Free Software and Education conference I attended in Quito, Ecuador last month, I met a most interesting person, GianMarco Schiesaro, who gave a very interesting presentation, entitled: Free Software and Human Rights. I’m not aware that this particular relationship has been investigated many times.

"As the founder of the free software movement and author of the GNU General Public License, I am writing to correct a misleading characterisation of free software presented in William Venema's article about open source. National Law Journal, Oct. 20. I do not wish to defend open source, which I have never supported.

"When we speak of Free Software (FS), we are speaking about the freedom it gives users, as all supporters of the FS movement understand (or, at least, are expected to know). And freedom of software cannot exist in isolation. It depends on other freedoms, such as freedom of speech..."

I last booted Windows on my year-old laptop on October 8, according to my SETI@Home stats. I hadn't realized my conversion had been so complete, but over the course of the last few months, I found myself in Gates World less and less for fewer and fewer things.

I received this very interesting email today, Lulu raising an important question of weaning the teachers off the proprietary software document formats.

Its such an important issue that I decided to blog my answer and also I request you to comment and share your experiences too.

"Patents are short-term monopolies (20 years) designed to give inventors sufficient time in which to recoup their R&D costs and turn a profit. Open source turns the 20-year patent term into two years, if that. As a relentless, ever-growing competitor, open source keeps the proprietary world in check and on its toes to a degree that the industry has never before seen."

It's totally a reasonable modern analogue. Jefferson would have been all about crypto.