THE CONSTANT WAR on the Internet is a war against disruptive means of business and communication.

Firefox is now ahead of Internet Explorer in Europe.

Matt asks, does that make the Web a duopoly? And is anti-trust enforcement now the only way open source can compete with Microsoft?

The beauty of the GPL, as any accomplished software developer will recognize, is that like a piece of elegantly written code, it has a simplicity and transparency all of its own. The license fulfils its demanding objective, of protecting and promoting the principles of free software, without ambiguity or compromise, and as such, is unlikely to fade away.

Sometimes open source ideals make for the strangest–and most wonderful–bedfellows. We met Dr. Vandana Shiva–physicist, scientist, environmentalist, and activist–several years ago. Her work saving seeds and protecting traditional knowledge in the farming industry parallels the openness, transparency, collaboration and freedom of open source ideology.

So let's just accept that Linux geeks land on all points of the political spectrum and take a look at the personal politics and styles of the two godfathers of the open source movement: Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.

"Just returning from the LibrePlanet 2009 conference, I had the opportunity to talk to some of the most hardcore software freedom advocates and see their reactions to the single largest regional implementation of free software in the real world anywhere on earth, in Latin America..."

Companies turning to open source in the recession should know that free software is about much more, according to the GNU founder.

Several days ago, I wrote about the real reasons why I, and so many others, use Linux to an overwhelming response. One of the often-cited reasons for using Linux in my post that I dismissed is that it is open-source. Most people seemed to agree, but here is my question: If Linux was exactly as it is now, except it was proprietary and closed-source, would you still use it?