I don't disagree with either point. But if a monopoly has already destoyed the market, free software may be the only way to provide some of a market's benefits. Competition is a good thing for consumers, whether or not producers benefit. In a monopoly, only one producer will benefit from everyone's effort. So competition vanishes, unless some of the producers are not in it for the profit, or, like Sun with OpenOffice, only in it for profits that arise indirectly.

I disagree that competition is ALWAYS good for the consumers in the long run. Until I see the complete equation in front of me, I will reserve some doubts. I guess I qualify as an unbeliever.

ecology and environment.

And I have heard similar stories about the New Economy during the Dot Com Bubble. If it turns out to be a mirage, do we still blame Microsoft for forcing us to take the wrong turn? We are responsible for what we allowed to happen.

OK. Let's try "intelligently regulated competition" as a good thing for consumers.

Empirically speaking it seems that the ecology of software has tended towards monopoly and freedom. How many public markets haven't ended up with some combination of the two just a few years after the segment's creation?

Very few individuals really examine or question the mesh of beliefs and assumptions underlying the money economy, particularly in these centuries since the Industrial Revolution. I seem to understand we had previously, some primitive feudalisms, kingdoms, religious cooperatives, etc., although that was so far back in antiquity that today we take it for granted nobody should ever do anything other than through the mechanism of money. This uncoupling and quantifying of all obligation, all exchange. Now that we have an internet we will certainly do something different, although it will probably take humans centuries to figure it out. For example we could share in production and consumption through partnership allocations on multiparty ledgers. http://www.gldialtone.com/nonquantified.htm

While Don's argument sound reasonable, it seems to disregard the most important aspect of software development: innovation. While many of the common aspects of computing become open source, there will always be room for innovative companies and developers to create new products and features. This is what will allow developers to continue to earn revenue from selling software (disregarding the services aspect). Open source prevents developers from needing to reinvent the wheel every time they begin an application and instead focus on innovating new features or reusing existing code in innovative ways. Consider the desktop GUI. How many times has this been reimplemented, not because there was much wrong with the existing ones but simply because the code wasn't available? How many years of development time was wasted by extremely talented programmers who could have been working to enhance the user experience rather than rehash old ideas?

STEAL SOFTWARE TODAY - STOP THE OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT.