When you have a favorite sports team that you watch year in and year out, one that always seems to break your heart right at the end--yet you continue to support them and watch them, seemingly having forgotten what happened just the season before, then you are a certified nutcase.
When you get together with other like-minded certified nutcases, then something weird happens: you become a community, or a nation, if you will. The most obvious example are Red Sox Nation, Cubs' fans, (until recently)The cult of Mac, and not so obviously--fans of Tux; open source, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
There's a shared sense of purpose and identity, of being the underdog, of fighting against forces that are much larger and more powerful; perhaps this is why Redmond doesn't have a cult; what would they call it? Convicted Monopolist Nation?
One of the very refreshing things about using Linux and open source is the willingness for nearly everyone who is familiar with it to share little (or not so little) tidbits of knowledge; in effect, everyone associated in any way with open source is a sort of teacher, willing to go above and beyond to help out others trying to figure out what this open source stuff is all about, how they can get it to work, and ultimately, after enough exposure to it, how they can help others.
This is also one of things that drew me to Mac in my earlier computing days; the idea that a company would be responsive to its users, changing things that didn't work, being prompt about fixing things, and generally not releasing products that were not fully tested and ready for consumer use. It's not so much that they have strayed from that greatly, but that the success engendered by their invention and sales of the iPod has made them engage in things that are necessary in dealing with the world of monopolies and oligopolies, such as the telcos, the media giants, and the rest.
To be successful in today's world of completely unrestricted business practices requires lying down with some pretty ugly dogs, and sadly, that just can't be helped. If the current US regime won't enforce the laws (through the department of Justice) then there's not much other companies can do, regardless of their best intentions.
In this environment, the media giants have become more like a Columbian cartel than a series of companies offering their goods for sale; the telcos, and a certain unnamed software company are especially guilty of this as well.
And so, when these cartels start teaming up, deciding what you can and cannot do with the content that you have purchased, on the hardware you own, when and where you can view something, all in the name of defending intellectual property, then something has got to give.
Not coincidentally, these same media giants are the ones (thanks to lax business enforcement) that own all or nearly all of the news channels--so they decide what is or is not important for you to see, what is or is not a crime, and so on.
Open source is about much more than forcing some of these monopolies, oligopolies and cartels into being at least in some tiny way responsive to consumers wants and needs; it's about keeping the internet--the most democratizing force in the world--open and free for all to use, particularly those in poor and developing nations that cannot afford the x hundred dollars for licensing fees and the x thousand dollars for the latest Excesso 3000 super computer of the day--open source software allows them access to the news, to information, to educational tools, all at a fraction of the price, on old or donated hardware.
When all that matters is making higher and higher mountains of cash, regardless of the quality of the product, or the fact that the consumer has no choice in the matter, then everyone suffers; this cannibalization, this stripping and shipping everything that isn't nailed down overseas so that it can be done by (virtual)slave labor in China--when that still isn't enough to satiate their ravening maws with the taste of money--then they have to go on a witchhunt against its own customers and citizens (there not being much separating government and business these days) to the only source of income left (the manufacturing is nearly all gone overseas): the twenty-first invention of 'intellectual property'.
And to make sure that you don't hum a tune, or see a movie or try some software without paying their exorbitant fees, they criminalize infringing of this simple thing, copyright, so that they can stuff themselves even fuller at the public's expense.
Every where they look is another profit margin: charging for your email; filtering your content and opening your attachments sent over the internet (they might contain infringing material, don't you know); using cute little things like Digital Restrictions Management and Trusted Platform Module to lock you into a system, and only allow you to use it the way they decide, on a pay per use basis, if you even get permission to do so.
They stifle creativity, education, innovation, technological, scientific and economic advances, hollowing out a nation known for those things so that they can protect a select few forever and ever, amen.
They can, and will likely be successful, in driving the forces of economic and technological advances away from America's shores, but they cannot stop them--Moore's Law will march further onward, whether it's in a US lab or one overseas. The world community, the internet, the fields of science, medicine, technology will all just route themselves around and away from the good ole US of A, reaping the benefits that Americans once claimed as their own. All because a handful of lying, gluttonous scoundrels want to remain perched on their tinpot thrones.
When the government refuses to block these bloodthirsty and craven monopolists from gutting a nation's resources, then citizens have to step up and take things into their own hands--it's not enough to vote at the ballot box--as a number of crooks will just take their places; you have to vote with your wallets as well, for that is what they fear the most. Loss of their precioussss revenue.
Open source is gaining momentum, and that is something they are very worried about--there's no lobbyists from Tux,Inc., and no quarterly profit margins on Wall Street for the Linux kernel. It's just a community, a nation, if you will, of like-minded individuals who want to share their knowledge. Not solely for personal gain nor ludicrous profits, but because it's the right thing to do.
It's not enough to elect politicians with a certain letter in front of their locales to turn around the excesses of the past many years; you have to think larger, about making the entire planet a better place for everyone to live and to enjoy the inalienable rights that all of us are entitled to.
Add weight to that snowball gathering speed as it races down the hillside, give it enough momentum to travel the planet. Open source software. More than just for hobbyists. Join the nation. Join the world. Open source software.