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...is not to be anti what you don't want, but pro what you do.

If you don't want people to adopt Vista, get involved with the Beryl or Compiz projects as one example, in order to give people a free alternative to Aero, which is one of Vista's main selling points.

Another fantastic thing which we could integrate into existing Linux distros is OpenBFS. We could then tell people that Microsoft pulled WinFS because they weren't able to implement it after years of trying, whereas Linux has a db filesystem right now.

If you don't want people to use Vista, simply telling them not to isn't going to work...you need to give them some alternative. If they see that Linux can do everything that Vista can, as well as being free, they'll use it. Freedom in itself can't be sold as the main point, because people won't care if the software doesn't do what they need...but if it does, they'll see freedom as a major bonus.

In truth, the FSF did a lot more to effectively fight DRM back when they still gave a damn about the GNU project, IMHO. Nobody is going to win against DRM by fearmongering and making a lot of noise...we'll win against DRM by giving people a better tangible alternative that they can actually use to perform the tasks they need.

Anyone remember BeFS it came out in 1996, supported most of the "difficult and innovative" features WinFS was advertized to have, and WORKS. Its not quite relational, but it has extensive indexed metadata that makes it act as if it were. There's an open-source reimplimentation . Be, Inc. really did have some great technology, pity they couldnt make a buisness of it.

It's been rewritten as OpenBFS, and, although it's still in beta, it was the basis for the SkyOS filesystem, SkyFS. There's no reason not to use it, except that I think most would agree that the ZFS feature list is probably a superset of that of BFS.

"OpenBFS, as all file systems under BeOS, is being developed as a kernel add-on. Unlike all other file systems (and kernel add-ons in general), it is being developed in C++. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to use C++ in the kernel"

sounds suspiciously like BFS.