A recent article caught my eye and turned it a nice shade of red. It discussed the 'hardly new' idea that the future of software usage 'must involve a mixture of free and proprietary products' something the writer refers to as 'mixed source'. The piece was entitled 'Mixed source - the best of both worlds' which may give you a clue as to where I disagree with it.

There is a frustrating phenomenon that I notice amongst many technology enthusiasts and general users, the conditioning to pathetically expect new progress from the software companies. All too often I see someone claiming to be a fan, asking, pleading, begging, wishing, warning or even threatening any software company so that they would implement a feature that they wish for.

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EuroparlTV seems to work only for users of either Adobe’s proprietary Flash player (via the proprietary Adobe Flash file format) or users of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player (via the proprietary WMV file format).

What this means to an open web, that is usable for everyone should be clear.

"...Something else that hasn't changed is vendor's annoying, no, make that pathological mania for secrecy. Another gadget you can get is one to read and decipher the trouble codes emitted by your vehicle's engine. These have just a tiny bit of storage, so if you don't capture the information quickly it's lost, which makes diagnosing a transient problem ever so much fun.

"... While these environmental consequences alone are sufficient reason for many to reject Vista, the disposable computer mentality is a symptom of a larger problem—one that should concern all social activists. That problem is the dependency of activists on software owned and exclusively controlled by entities that design their software in ways directly opposed to grassroots social change.

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

"I read Negroponte's statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO. I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom..."