But I would feel dirty inside if I let the “12 ideas Ubuntu should steal from Windows 7” slide by without a comment. Keep in mind that part of my problem is that Ubuntu “should” steal the ideas, and that it should be from “Windows 7.”

"We occasionally discuss Microsoft’s very clear plan to ’steal’ free software projects from GNU/Linux and bring them over to Windows. The OSI ‘invasion’ was merely a first step. At the moment, Microsoft is trying to grab Apache..."

I recently suggested that, given Apple and Adobe's growing war over iPad and iPhone applications, it would make sense for Adobe to move not only its end-user applications, but its Creative Suite development stack, to Linux. While I don't know if Adobe is considering it, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, would welcome Adobe.

Despite what you’ve heard, the online version of Office 2010 announced by Microsoft earlier this week won’t be free to corporate users, and isn’t a threat to the likes of Google, Adobe, or even Zoho, which sells online productivity software to small and medium-sized businesses.

Using another so-called "promise", Microsoft has just implicitly confirmed that it is on a warpath against people who make money selling Free software

In 2002, that would have been Windows. Today, it's likely to be Adobe Reader or Flash Player, whose share of vulnerabilities and exploits are on the rise while Microsoft's is falling.

It has always amazed me how many people pirate. As the well-known anti-piracy video clip says, “You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag,” but people do regularly steal software and other copyrighted materials. They seem to have an innate belief that software should be free.

The world’s most popular operating system is Windows, which is made by the Microsoft Corporation. Linux has no links with Windows at all. Microsoft doesn’t contribute anything to Linux and, in fact, is rather hostile toward it, because it threatens Microsoft’s market dominance. This means that installing Linux can give you an entirely Microsoft-free PC. How enticing does that sound?

Adobe Acrobat is expensive, but that doesn’t mean you have to live a life without portable documents. What many people don’t realize is that PDF is a Federal Information Processing Standard, which means the specifications behind the format are widely published.