I'm a big fan of Matt Asay's writings about free software even though I have been rather dreading the appearance of one that I knew, one day, he would write...because it would be wrong. And now he has written it, with the self-explanatory headline: “Free software is dead. Long live open source.”

Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software

"Matt Asay has left Alfresco and joined Canonical as its new Chief Operating Officer..."

Open source is changing not just how companies make software, but how they sell it. Alfresco's Matt Asay explains the new sales cycle and the skills that today's software sales people need to close deals.

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --

"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution.

This week theme has been "who's going to pay for open source?" It's shown up in a number of blogs, like Matt Asay's.

But the one area in which (Matt Asay and I) have never seen eye to eye is the Linux desktop. I certainly don’t agree that desktop Linux is “utter crap” compared to Mac or Windows, and I’ve disagreed with his statements on desktop Linux for years, particularly in the area of application installation. Matt’s on the record as not liking the Linux desktop, though I’m not sure why, so the fact that we agree to disagree on this subject is not surprising.

An analysis of Microsoft's latest admission regarding the Free software threat.