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You might try Broadcast2000.
It received a good write-up on O'Reilly
http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/broadcast2000/

Hmm, you had me going. Hit the books, do your homework, and realize if you're going to discuss philosophy, you've gotta use the terms right: Categories of Free and Non-Free Software describes simply the types and distinctions of free and non-free software. There's a helpful Venn Diagram.

The short of it, is that BSD licensed software and public domain works are free software.

Do you understand the distinctions between Free Software and Open Source? Do you know why RMS strongly favors the one over the other? Have you followed the discussion between O'Reilly and Kuhn+RMS (O'reilly's standpoint, reply by Kuhn+RMS, Reply by O'rielly)? Can you describe the advantages and disadvantages of the GPLs viral nature? Can you argue the merits of more lenient licenses like the BSD license or the LGPL?

I have done my homework so please don't lecture me. There is nothing wrong with a respectful comment to show that someone doesn't know what he is talking about, but being condescending is irritating when you are right and outright stupid when you are not.

Yep. Because it would be superceded and replaced by something that doesn't abuse it's users. If that threatens the viability of your precious business, I'm sorry. That's not relevant to the philosophy RMS espouses.

The problem with your logic is that those users don't feel abused. You are basically argueing against the freedom for people to freely make a choice because somehow you are better able to make those decisions for them. Why don't you respect their choice? Besides, they are always free to order a custom GPL'ed product for 10-1000 times the cost, effort, time to deployment, etc. The company that created the software is in no way being unethical/wrong by selling a closed source product. They just deliver what the customers want. If the clients are willing to pay more for the source, they can have it (but they don't ask for it). If they want GPL'ed code, they can have it for a price. But again, _they_ decide to choose this particular option from all those available.

Then you are not interested in real philosophy. RMS is; I am too. Goodbye.

The fact that I don't believe in unattainable utopia doesn't mean that I cannot use them as a frame of reference. But I simply cannot accept the premise that man is perfect, that everyone has the same desires or other such nonsense. There are a thousand ways to practice philosophy while keeping in touch with reality.

Hmm, you had me going. Hit the books, do your homework, and realize if you're going to discuss philosophy, you've gotta use the terms right: Categories of Free and Non-Free Software describes simply the types and distinctions of free and non-free software. There's a helpful Venn Diagram.

The short of it, is that BSD licensed software and public domain works are free software.

Do you understand the distinctions between Free Software and Open Source? Do you know why RMS strongly favors the one over the other? Have you followed the discussion between O'Reilly and Kuhn+RMS (O'reilly's standpoint, reply by Kuhn+RMS, Reply by O'rielly)? Can you describe the advantages and disadvantages of the GPLs viral nature? Can you argue the merits of more lenient licenses like the BSD license or the LGPL?

I have done my homework so please don't lecture me. There is nothing wrong with a respectful comment to show that someone doesn't know what he is talking about, but being condescending is irritating when you are right and outright stupid when you are not.

Yep. Because it would be superceded and replaced by something that doesn't abuse it's users. If that threatens the viability of your precious business, I'm sorry. That's not relevant to the philosophy RMS espouses.

The problem with your logic is that those users don't feel abused. You are basically argueing against the freedom for people to freely make a choice because somehow you are better able to make those decisions for them. Why don't you respect their choice? Besides, they are always free to order a custom GPL'ed product for 10-1000 times the cost, effort, time to deployment, etc. The company that created the software is in no way being unethical/wrong by selling a closed source product. They just deliver what the customers want. If the clients are willing to pay more for the source, they can have it (but they don't ask for it). If they want GPL'ed code, they can have it for a price. But again, _they_ decide to choose this particular option from all those available.

Then you are not interested in real philosophy. RMS is; I am too. Goodbye.

The fact that I don't believe in unattainable utopia doesn't mean that I cannot use them as a frame of reference. But I simply cannot accept the premise that man is perfect, that everyone has the same desires or other such nonsense. There are a thousand ways to practice philosophy while keeping in touch with reality.

Hmm, you had me going. Hit the books, do your homework, and realize if you're going to discuss philosophy, you've gotta use the terms right: Categories of Free and Non-Free Software describes simply the types and distinctions of free and non-free software. There's a helpful Venn Diagram.

The short of it, is that BSD licensed software and public domain works are free software.

Do you understand the distinctions between Free Software and Open Source? Do you know why RMS strongly favors the one over the other? Have you followed the discussion between O'Reilly and Kuhn+RMS (O'reilly's standpoint, reply by Kuhn+RMS, Reply by O'rielly)? Can you describe the advantages and disadvantages of the GPLs viral nature? Can you argue the merits of more lenient licenses like the BSD license or the LGPL?

I have done my homework so please don't lecture me. There is nothing wrong with a respectful comment to show that someone doesn't know what he is talking about, but being condescending is irritating when you are right and outright stupid when you are not.

Yep. Because it would be superceded and replaced by something that doesn't abuse it's users. If that threatens the viability of your precious business, I'm sorry. That's not relevant to the philosophy RMS espouses.

The problem with your logic is that those users don't feel abused. You are basically argueing against the freedom for people to freely make a choice because somehow you are better able to make those decisions for them. Why don't you respect their choice? Besides, they are always free to order a custom GPL'ed product for 10-1000 times the cost, effort, time to deployment, etc. The company that created the software is in no way being unethical/wrong by selling a closed source product. They just deliver what the customers want. If the clients are willing to pay more for the source, they can have it (but they don't ask for it). If they want GPL'ed code, they can have it for a price. But again, _they_ decide to choose this particular option from all those available.

Then you are not interested in real philosophy. RMS is; I am too. Goodbye.

The fact that I don't believe in unattainable utopia doesn't mean that I cannot use them as a frame of reference. But I simply cannot accept the premise that man is perfect, that everyone has the same desires or other such nonsense. There are a thousand ways to practice philosophy while keeping in touch with reality.

You mean the x86 Linux community. ATI could do more for the PPC Linux community.

O'Reilly's site has a very detailed and interesting article called "And Justice for Adobe". It has lots of details, a chronology of events and several links related to the case.

This system is used AFAIK in Bryant Park. There's more information by Rob Flickenger the man behind the infamous pringles antenna.

Don
----

'Eatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepudding'

This system is used AFAIK in Bryant Park. There's more information by Rob Flickenger the man behind the infamous pringles antenna.

Don
----

'Eatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepudding'

Now some of you say, I'm on the board of this organization. I fight many battles on that board. Some of you say we are too extreme; you say that in the wrong way, right? You send emails that say, "You are too extreme. You ought to be more mainstream." You know and I am with you. I think EFF is great. It's been the symbol. It's fought the battles. But you know, it's fought the battles in ways that sometimes need to be reformed. Help us. Don't help us by whining. Help us by writing on the check you send in, "Please be more mainstream." The check, right? This is the mentality you need to begin to adopt to change this battle.

While not from the paper in question, my favorite quote on the topic is "The marketers can compete with free; it just has to be better. Look at bottled water if you don't believe me," - Jonathan Potter, Digital Media Association.
(Found at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1982

Pretty much sums up my feelings on how the entertainment industry can survive.

According to this page, that's 5 LOC's (give or take).

For other Brewster Kahle interviews, see also the Slashdot story that pointed to the O'Reilly interview and the Slashdot story that pointed to the Feed magazine interview (which is currently unaccessible from my machine).

There's an excellent interview with Kahle on technical details at O'Reilly's own archive -- here.

It's the file formats. Not the apps themselves, but the goddamned proprietary formats. I use Linux at home and my wife & son use OS X, but I'm stuck on W2K at work because of complex Word documents and inscrutable Visio files. Just a few minutes ago, I overheard the document production manager for my company (responsible for coordinating big bids/proposals) insisting that she needed Office XP because there might be subtle errors in some of the complex Word XP documents that she was trying to open with Word 2k. Now if I had my druthers, the answer would be a resounding "no" and those who were producing documents and failing to save as RTF or other slightly-more-open formats would be thrown from the roof onto pikes, where they would hang impaled as an example to others.

But that's just me. I'm more concerned than the average geek about the long-term viability of my company and the ability to retain knowledge over the course of many years. Sure, I downloaded and use OpenOffice. But there are idosyncracies within proprietary documents that just don't translate well, and it's difficult to convince others in the office to save-as to anything but the latest default format. They're just too lazy, and don't have the foresight to understand that saving in the format-of-the-day is bad for knowledge retention. Thet're more concerned about kewl toys and not looking behind-the-times. Even my local IT lead referred to the Office XP upgrade as a "tithe," unable to cite even one functional requirement that the latest upgrade would satisfy. The result is that we waste money on unnecessary app upgrades. And with them come the recursive traps that are proprietary data formats.

Here's a first step: Proliferate open, fully disclosed, non-patented formats. What should those formats be? The OO XML formats are a good start. The Microsoft XML formats are contaminated with proprietary external reference bits and are a very bad start. I've read postings (a good one on OReilly.net) to the effect that open file formats ought to be required for government procurement. Bravo; that's a nice start. But the immediate obstacle is a practical one, and a very real one at that: You and everyone else in your office needs to get work done, and any switch must be unobtrusive.

So let's embrace and extend the Microsoft dime-bag model. Remember (for those old enough) how someone sent you a MSWord document that you couldn't open, and refered you to the downloadable MSWord Viewer? And when you got a few more .DOC files you bought into it and asked for a copy of Word? Let's use the same method to wean people off the bad stuff and onto the good stuff. It needs to be trivially easy for people to save and work in open formats. First, the OpenOffice developers need to write application plug-ins for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (on Windows and Mac) that set/enforce an open format as default. Motivated IT folks can install the plug-in everywhere, and let MSOffice's auto-convert feature hide the gory details of what's going on. Then we need a compact viewer program (or set of programs) that are quick downloads -- preferably under 1MB, and available on every notable platform. Remember, MS got a hell of a lot of market penetration through Word Viewer, Excel Viewer, and the like. Pretty soon the office will be using open formats with minimal pain within MS Office . Someone outside the office complain about open formats? Send 'em a tiny open viewer program. They whine about editing it? Give 'em the open format converter plug-in and a link to the OO.org site for a full download. But...

But don't try to displace MS Office with OpenOffice or anything else. Let Microsoft do that. Let the users come to their own conclusions based on experience. If you have enough people using open formats and there's an obvious alternative, you need only wait for Microsoft to come asking for tithes in the form of license renewal payments. Don't spend the time and effort to try and rip it out roots and all; let it whither and die in the ground.

Jon "open formats to the people"

Lawrence Lessig, in his keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002 at oscon, repeatedly made the four point argument:

• Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
• The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
• Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
• Ours is less and less a free society.

He made this argument while arguing against lengthy copyright terms, but I think the first point applies here: any creative work, such as Star Wars, builds upon the library of existing human work. It's nearly pointless to try to credit every single contributor to that existing compendium of knowledge. I guess it's a judgement call of when you should give credit, but this one feels ok to leave out, to me. (And the actual library will be a trivia factoid for years to come, this way.)

The reason I personally disliked that scene in Episode 2 is that it took place in a physical library at all, instead of being a four second web search. Kenobi doesn't Yahoo, apparently.

Not that I usually criticize Slashdot for lack of editorial judgement - that would be like criticizing the devil for being naughty - but the "one interviewee" who foretold MS giving away Windows for free was Brian Behlendorf, who can't exactly be called neutral where questions about Microsoft and open source software are concerned.

In other news, Bill Gates says "We will crush Linux like a bug," and Steve Jobs says, "Mac OS X is just so insanely great, it's insane in its greatness." Ho hum.

A Technical Comparison of TTLS and PEAP

ZDNet also has a good overview of the proposed solutions.

I have never seen anything like this claim - Stallman advocating the use of guns. I did a web search, and the closest thing I could find was this:

From Oreillynet.com

A government should not be allowed to (and should not want to!) destroy its constitents' livelihoods. Therefore, government should not produce GPLed software (its output should be in the public domain) and should not promote the use of GPLed software or the spread of the GPL as a license. It would truly be horrible if government guns were used to fight Stallman's war against programmers and small business.

The above was written by Brett Glass (or someone claiming to be him).

And it aint freedom he's advocating-- its the elimination of programmer as a job title, and the elimination of any ownership of ones work product.

Considering that RMS claims that one of the benefits of free software is that you can hire someone to fix a program (since you have the source), he isn't advocating eliminating programmers as a job title. Look at the Linux companies, and at companies like IBM, Motorola, and SGI - they have programmers who are paid to work on GPL'd software.

Trying to attack the GPL by going after Stallman isn't going to win any points. And your last post seems to be very short in facts.

-MDL

For remote access, all the server has to do is send XML data to Mozilla. Also, Mozilla natively supports the SOAP API, so it can access any SOAP data source. Cool, huh?

It's a little different if you are talking about accessing client-side data sources. Mozilla/XUL is (kind of) a virtual machine (VM), meaning it doesn't intrude too much upon the client's OS. But, XUL/XPCOM has bindings for all kinds of programming languages, such as C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, and the list keeps getting longer (Good intro here). Thus, on the client-side you can use the database capability of any of these to talk to the Mozilla elements. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to whip up just a little communication between Mozilla and ODBC ;-).

"The technology would paste a digital certificate on every byte of data"
O'Reilly
(see item 5)
(google cache of de-generationx)
Cringely--slightly off-topic, but still interesting

Here's the answer to my question:
"Our new kernel is based upon 2.4.19 and includes Robert Love's preemptive kernel and scheduler-hints patches, Ingo Molnar's O(1) scheduler and smptimers patches, and Rik van Riel's reverse mapping patches, for enhanced responsiveness and scalability under high loads and in high-end multiprocessor systems."

O'Reilly Gentoo article

I may give Gentoo a whirl. Mandrake is getting stale.

-Kevin

I heard this unusual call for free software (and I think it's obvious in this context that the proper term to use is "free" and not "open source")

If the software is open source, even though the human rights staff might not be able to personally verify that it's accurate and free of bias, they can take the source to a university or other expert and have it vetted.

There are additional advantages if the software is free in addition to having accessible source code.

There was no announcement on the W3C's front page

Then you do not visit it often enough, because it was announced there like everything. It was in fact on the homepage on August 20th, that is, long before the flood that the articles of The Register and /. started.

It is indeed excellent that this is the turn-out, but there is no reason to imply that the W3C was Bad[tm] in this respect. TimBL made it very clear in his book that software patents posed the greatest obstacle to innovation, yeah, and BTW:

2002-05-12 09:59:23 TimBL Speaks Up Against RAND (articles,patents) (rejected)

So, why didn't /. want to tell us about this? :-)

Thanks, Bruce and others for the great work you've done!

I guess the people at O'Reilly are finally realizing what they are: geeks.

Oh really? You think so?

I guess the people at O'Reilly are finally realizing what they are: geeks.

Oh really? You think so?

I guess the people at O'Reilly are finally realizing what they are: geeks.

Oh really? You think so?

On a system with many users, limiting the damage caused to a single user to himself is a necessity. On a system with one user/administrator, it's meaningless.

No it isn't. It's the single thing that keeps virii from propagating on linux. I don't mean worms like slapper, I mean things that attach themselves to executable code. The fact that almost all binaries under linux are not installed writable by the average user, limits the effectiveness of classic virii, if not completely irradicating them.

Now, I'll grant that this is not a particularly populer form of malware anymore. But running as non-root makes you virtually impervius to it. There are LOTS of other advantages to not running as root, but to be able to completely eliminate one form of malware is something that can't be ignored.

$.02

I mean, the system looks FANTASTIC, but the just-works thing is crap. My printer doesn't work with OS/X.. it's the one thing I really wanted to work, and it doesn't. Not even the Gimp-Print people have a driver for it yet.

And Unix stuff is a royal pain in the ASS to get running well.

I posted a long critique on the O'Reilly website, home of the major cheerleading -- I attached it to his second article. (Link here).

It *looks* wonderful. And the notebooks may be absolutely fantastic: I have not worked with one. (Linux is apparently pretty weak on notebooks). But as a desktop... if you're really a Unix guy, you're probably going to be happier with Mandrake. If you're a Mac person, then OS/X is a no-brainer, IMO.... but Unix geeks should be wary. There's simply not as much 'there' there as Apple, and what I believe are its astroturfers, want you to believe.

They should change their logo to: "Everything just works, as long as it's not Unix stuff". (or particular printers)

I'm glad someone else is getting into the act, especially O'Reilly! Plus it looks pretty cool. New, but cool.

Wrong. There are many more at MozDev, as well as links to other Mozilla/XUL sites. Also Komodo , a commercial product was written with Mozilla. Activestate is actually making money with this.

O'reilly is taking this seriously. Maybe they know something you don't ;-)?

There is indeed a section on testing. Of course, there are lots of other resources online. :)

SMS can be traced ... until people start running open relays

If you do a Google search for "MySQL vs. PostgreSQL, you'll get a lot of hits. Here are a few that seem to be pretty informative (if not slightly dated):

here
here
here
here
here
here (not really a comparison, but read this article and the linked Postgres article for more info)

In my personal experience, Postgres has historically been the database more prepared for larger, more multi-threaded applications.

Obviously, there have been debates about which are faster in various different applications. To be honest, I have no hard data, nor have I stretched them either to their capacity, but as a user and casual developer, they are both fast enough for me not to notice.

What's inarguable exciting can be directly quoted from MySQL's own comparison of the two (listed above):

[B]oth products are continually evolving. We at MySQL AB and the PostgreSQL developers are both working on making our respective databases as good as possible, so we are both a serious alternative to any commercial database.

Nice summary by O'Reilly
Sharp USA site
Zaurus user's site
Sharp Developer site
ZDNet UK review
cNet review
Linuxdevices.com review
ZDnet review
TechTV review
ThinkGeek review
PC Magazine review
IT Reviews review
Cnet shopper latest prices
Buy @ Amazon

This made me look fore more info on this guy (Robert Morris), here is an interview. He seems like a good guy in good position.

This kind of reminds of this article: SMS Relay -- An Idea for Fault-Tolerant Communications on O'Reilly. The guy suggested that text messaging should have a fallback peer to peer mode, in case of disasters like 911 that wipe out all the transmitters.

The numeric rating really seems disproportionate, as the reviewer did have some good things to say:

• "for a person who is determined to keep a daily journal available on the Internet, it would provide helpful reading material"
• "the depth of covered material is surprisingly large for such a narrow topic"

The primary audience for Essential Blogging is someone who is new to blogging. If you already use a blogging system like Movable Type, you'll learn something from the book (Ben and Mena, the authors of Movable Type, wrote a lot of new material for their chapters), but you are not the primary audience. We even say this in the preface, and the back cover pretty clearly states what's inside: "Essential Blogging helps you select the right blogging software for your needs and shows you how to get your blog up and running."

Someone new to blogging can read Chapter 1 to learn about the different aspects of a blogging system; the pros and cons of self-hosting vs hosted, desktop vs server; and ultimately decide which web journal system to use. Then they can read the chapters specific to their chosen system to get started, and return when they're ready to customize the appearance of their blog.

While working on the book, I kept my Dad in mind. He's technical, not stupid, and if he wanted to start a blog, what I want him to know about? The audience also explains the screenshots--if you're new to blogging, you don't to know what to expect nor what the possibilities are. Although it's hard for the reviewer to imagine there are people who haven't been hacking web sites and writing their own blogging systems since 1996, such people do exist.

But even people who already blog and are entrenched in a particular blogging system should check out the others. I'm a Movable Type user myself, but it was a real eye-opener to use Radio Userland for a while. The whole approach to software and blogging is different in Radio Userland, and it makes you look at your own setup in a new light. I'm not saying you need to buy Essential Blogging to do this, but such comparisons are a benefit of having multiple systems presented side-by-side in the one book.

About the only thing I agree with the reviewer wholeheartedly on is that it's a shame we don't cover LiveJournal more. When the book was being developed, I didn't see the geek interest in LiveJournal that I see now. Perhaps in the second edition we'll have chapters on LiveJournal.

So to conclude, I sure hope the old saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity is true. I hope the next book gets a real review (more than six paragraphs) by someone who reads the preface :-).

--Nat
(blogs on O'Reilly Network and use.perl, as well as several Movable Type installations for family, and a Blossom blog for work)

I think I remember reading someplace that you can enable WebDAV server functions in OS X through some module in Apache. Oh, here it is. The article is rather dated, as it refers to the public beta, but does anybody know if this hack still works? I guess I'll give it a shot when I get into work.

"Let's talk about software patents. There's a guy, Mr. Gates, who's brilliant, right? He's brilliant. A brilliant business man; he has some insights, he is even a brilliant policy maker. Here's what he wrote about software patents: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Here's the first thing I'm sure you've read of Bill Gates that you all 100 percent agree with. Gates is right. He is absolutely right. Then we shift into the genius business man: "The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." Excluding future competitors. "
Source: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/ lessig.html?page=2

The one thing I like the look of is P3P support. A little shocking that IE got this long before anybody else.

But it's not terribly shocking that Microsoft's P3P implementation wasn't (isn't?) entirely up to snuff (see: SuperCookies). This is somewhat humorous, given that support for P3P in IE 6.0 solely concerns cookie use, and not much (if anything else) in the W3C Recommendation (see: P3P: Privacy Primer).

Some support (IE 6.x) is probably better than no support (NN 7.x), but there is no P3P implementation for either the Mac or *nix versions of Internet Explorer. So, while I'm willing to admit that Microsoft is trying, I'd continue to ask that they try a bit harder in the future.

Actually, this isn't as far from the truth as you think it is. Everyones favorite anonymous Perl KU (kwalitee usherance) developer, chromatic, manged to turn the Bill of Rights into a circumvention device.

Open source is supposed to be about freedom.

But in either form ("open source" or "free software"), it's revisionist bullshit.

Free software, according to Stallman and the FSF, is about the essential freedom to share and modify software. They explictly reject the choice to produce and use proprietary software as a freedom. That makes as much sense, they say, as the "freedom to choose slavery". Free software is about as far away from "freedom to choose" as you can get.

How about open source, that much more convenient doctrine? According to its founders,

The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves.

So while ESR may support the freedom to choose in general (he does), that is not at all what open source is about. Open source is about convincing the world that it is a better development methodology. Most of its adherents would be perfectly happy it it killed off proprietary software, thus eliminating "choice".

So, the "freedom to choose" may be your philosophy, or Tim O'Reilly's philosophy, but it is not that of free software or open source.

Perl has fairly good testing support, if you choose to use it. Writing a refactoring browser for Perl is non-trivial, but test first development is possible. I do it regularly.

Pic 2

but she looks even better in person

She's the one on the right.

If you're using Mozilla or a browser that supports user css files, you can disable blink tags for all sites. Wahoo!

Create a file usercontent.css in your profiles chrome directory (something like C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\f0saup39.slt\chrome on windows).

In said file put

blink {text-decoration: inherit !important;}

and your blinking will cease forever.

For more examples of the fun things you can do with user css, see the css anarchist.

The CSS Anarchist's Cookbook
The CSS Anarchist Strikes Again!

Cheers,

Roger

If you're using Mozilla or a browser that supports user css files, you can disable blink tags for all sites. Wahoo!

Create a file usercontent.css in your profiles chrome directory (something like C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\f0saup39.slt\chrome on windows).

In said file put

blink {text-decoration: inherit !important;}

and your blinking will cease forever.

For more examples of the fun things you can do with user css, see the css anarchist.

The CSS Anarchist's Cookbook
The CSS Anarchist Strikes Again!

Cheers,

Roger

Recently, Tim O'reilly wrote a piece on the growing politicization of open source. The software industry has already been politicized by Microsoft. We already have an IT purchasing system where merit has been passed over for political expediency. Quoteth The Who, Microsoft "decided the shotgun sings the song". With government IT spending already politicized, Open Source is merely playing by the rules of the game.

When you are a monopoly you gain certain abilities that The Law says you can't use. You wouldn't have these abilities if you had to compete in the market. A monopoly has to pretend as if it still has competition, even though it doesn't. If you get nothing else out of my post get that it's about forcing the public's concepts of a free market onto a market that is no longer a free market.

A hungry young company wouldn't be able to tie all its products together and then raise prices 80% . People would go elsewhere. A monpoly can, so a monopoly can't do that.

Now the American justice system has done an awful job of protecting the market from Microsoft. Ignore open source for the moment and consider the bloated boring industry that computers have become. Whatever microsoft brings out becomes semi-popular through interia, not innovation (and I hear microsoft say that a lot, but I don't think they know what it means - what microsoft have going for them is inertia).

and it's a popular opinion

...does Tim O'Reilly ever change that beige shirt?