Rick Stockton

NV, USA

computers

Mr. Tipp is unqualified to speak as an expert on the motives and opinions of FLOSS users if he truly hasn't "talked to a single user who’s said they’re using [open source] because it’s better." (He's either lying, or he has been living on another planet.)

Microsoft continues to invoke the distasteful and offensive "religious thing" label at every opportunity. I'm disappointed, and will reply (in kind) by pointing out that to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Tripp has not been beating his wife recently.

Finally, if Microsoft wants to assume that FLOSS projects are just another scheme by which for-profit companies will try to compete with them, that's OK. I feel that FLOSS software is primarily for the benefit of the community and society in general; making money is way down on the list of priorities. With lock-in Microsoft software, profit appears to be the top priority.

In my personal opinion, the only "competition" which we have with Microsoft is to provide an alternative to the convicted criminal monopolist's attempts to (1) proprietize the Internet; and (2) impose ever-greater Microsoft Corporate control over computer users' access to their own data (using proprietary Office XML data formats, proprietary Longhorn file systems, proprietary DRM, and so on).