It seems as if most people are for OpenSource but against any other form of distribution/development. For example, Microsoft maintains ownership of the software that they sell on store shelves. No one owns a copy of Windows except for Microsoft.

I came across two seemingly unrelated reports, one from the Register, stating that Microsoft will offer a choice of browsers in the EU version of Windows 7 and one from FAS Russia, which began proceedings in a case against several major hardware manufacturers. If this is the shape of things to come, it could mean the OS landscape is about to change.

Linux vendor Red Hat, and 17 other vendors, have protested a Swiss government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding.

As certain large nations approach bankruptcy, will so-called "IP"; become the next battleground?

Poland’s Office for Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) claims that selling laptops with obligatorily preinstalled Microsoft's Windows operating system constitutes a monopolistic practice and is restrictive to competition.

Microsoft turn to free software? That’ll be the day. Some have suggested that Microsoft might embrace free software and thus resolve the present conflict. That actually would be a terrific strategy for them, but I don’t think that Microsoft is smart enough to do it.

"...It is this intensive effort at the private appropriation of knowledge that has created different movements of resistance. The free software movement, the movements of farmers against biopiracy in seeds and animal and vegetal types, where Western corporations are privatizing the fruits of thousands of year of communal cooperation; the movement of patients and developmental organizations for access to reasonably priced medicines and medical knowledge; the movement for free access to scientific publications, are all related reactions to these New Enclosures.

It is one thing to recognise a problem, quite another to fix it. Although the Globalisation Institute is quite correct in saying that Microsoft's effective monopoly of the desktop is unfair to competitors and holds back the market, its proposed solution is no solution at all.