People who use and promote free software cite various reasons for their choice, but do those reasons tell the whole story? If, as a community, we want free software to continue to grow in popularity, especially in the mainstream, we should understand better the true reasons for choosing it—especially our own.

Matt Asay, CNET New's columnist on the business and politics of open source, takes new comers and the nostalgic among us on a retrospective of just how far the FOSS community has come over the past few years, paralleling his own introduction to and involvement in the community. A good introduction to FOSS for beginners and a good indicator of how far we've come and what we've yet to accomplish.

It is very hard to study in most of institutes using only free software. Everything is sad and needs heavy reorganization to not to force students to use non-free software.

Some good points, some that are stretching credibility a little. Overall a thought provoking posting though.

A quick walk through people's opinions on Microsoft and 'openness'

most free software is free in the monetary sense of the word ("gratis"), which can be a hindrance to those of us who are trying our best to emphasize the "freedom-as-in-liberty" sense of free software to those who don't yet understand.

Whenever you rent a movie, the multinational media industry forces you to watch their propaganda. They claim that downloading movies is the same as snatching bags, stealing cars or shoplifting. That’s simply not true – making a copy is fundamentally different from stealing.

A common question you hear from proprietary vendors when dismissing open source alternatives is “how many customers actually want access to the code anyway?” It is a question I put to an open source software vendor myself earlier this week while playing devil’s advocate.