Eric S. Raymond is notable among such advocates, identifying several business models that can support open-source development, and conceding that open-sourcing is not univerally applicable. You can read it in his paper “The Magic Cauldron”
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/

* Sharing of development effort; open-sourcing simplifies the accounting
* Spreading of risk, like of developers moving on
* Loss leader / market positioner, like Netscape Navigator for Netscape’s web-server software
* “Widget frosting”: drivers and the like for hardware
* “Give Away the Recipe, Open A Restaurant”, sell services associated with open-source software
* Accesorizing: selling merchandise, documentation, etc.
* “Free the future, sell the present”; software that’s initially closed-source and later becomes open-source
* “Free the software, sell the brand”, like selling testing for compatibility criteria. ESR proposed that Sun ought to have done that with Java
* “Free the software, sell the content”, ESR proposed that AOL could open-source its client

Incorrect. Proprietary business type maybe but the GPL states clearly that you can charge money for the product, you just have to supply the source in an acceptable manner. The BSD licenses don’t even have that requirement.
Other than that, many people earn their rent through open source precisely because big business sponsors FOSS development such as that some estimates concluded that the Linux kernel is feed through two thirds paid programmers rather than volunteers.

Vista is more of a rat’s nest than XP, but it’s still using the NT kernel. So will Windows 7. If you take a look at the beta release of the latter, it’s basically Vista SP2– it’s not a meaningful improvement.

I suspect that you understand what a software repo is– it’s basically a server of automatic installation scripts. If I’m not happy with my default VNC client, I type VNC, double click another one that looks good, and it automatically installs and shows up in the appropriate menu.

@Katie I had trouble getting the sound to work on my first Ubuntu install too. I found the solution after bumbling around Canonical’s forums for about ten minutes. That said, the problems aren’t related to Ubuntu, they’re related to using an operating system that wasn’t configured in the factory. Installing Windows or Mac OS on supported hardware requires a fair amount of configuration too.

You’re both right and you’re both wrong.

Linux is desktop ready… for people who just want to play Ltris and do wordprocessing. The computers that come with Linux (yes, computers come with Linux now – if it weren’t desktop ready, it wouldn’t come with computers as the default) arn’t for tweaking, for playing high quality games, for adding a bunch of software… they’re for little university girls that just want a cutesy 9″ laptop at their side.

And…

I’ve been told that Linux isn’t ready for the desktop yet. That it’s too complicated, and that if you ever have to open up a terminal/shell it’s far too complicated. I wholly disagree. First of all, unless you want to really customize your Linux setup, chances are you’ll never have to touch a command line — Ubuntu has done a fantastic job of setting up the System menu to allow to do anything. Once you enable “Advanced Desktop Effects” in the “Appearance” menu your computer will begin to ooze awesome out all open ports — just search YouTube for “compiz” and you’ll see a ton of awesome demos. Vista and OSX’s effects can’t even begin to touch the near limitless customizations found in CompizFusion.

There’s a ton of little things that “Just Work™” that used to be very complicated tasks in Linux just 5 years ago — things like Windows shared folders, NTFS read/write support, printers, bluetooth, WiFi, USB/Firewire hot plugged drives (When I plugged in a new drive at work it asked me what format to install it as: Linux [ext3], Windows [fat32 or NTFS], or Apple [HFS+] — I was floored) and probably many more I haven’t even come upon yet.

(thats from my brother…. http://www.kishcom.com/?paged=2 )

Linux is hard to learn. I know this because I’ve learned it… and it wasn’t easy. For people who are already used to buggering around with XP, its not worth the time. Because people like Joe already get everything they want for free, and know how to install it without issues. The first time I installed unbuntu i spent 3 hours just getting the sound to work. For geeks, its time well wasted. For adults, like joe, who use xp at their work place, who know how to use windows to their liking and who don’t give a shit that they’re supporting proprietary software… XP is perfect.

Vista is shit for anyone.

Having said that. I think that macs and windows are 100% anti freedom. By buying their products people are actively working against freedom and helping to support a proprietary and scary culture.

But Macs have their place – for the artsy types who have no fucking idea what linux is and for pepole like my boss who breaks computers every three seconds. The mac is perfect for him, its so much harder to break and so hard to get a virus.

I like firefox very much, I prefer it to IE.
Firefox is a good product, open source or not.
I’ve used mosaic/netscape/mozilla/firefox.
We agree on firefox.
Opera is good too.

I dont use vista.
I don’t like vista.
I’m not talking about vista.
Comparing linux to vista means nothing to me.
When they cancel support for xp I’ll be weighing my options.
But that will be windows 7, and linux will likely be different by then too.
Who knows what will happen.

The fact remains, my workplace uses xp.
I like xp and it does all the things I need.
It has the drivers I need, and I have my applications I’m familiar with and
work well with xp.

As to linux, I don’t have any doubt that its a better networking OS.
Which is why its used quite a lot for server computers.
But my network needs are very basic.

I don’t need a server.
I don’t need a software repository.
And I haven’t had a virus in years.
And I don’t have a problem with people charging money for software.

And I know lots of people, who love linux but who still don’t think its ready for the desktop market
Maybe this has changed, maybe it will soon. But if you are going to displace windows,
you need something more than a performace boost.

“We actually make our money very much similar to a traditional software company; most of our revenue comes from licensing,” Urlocker said. “We have a quid pro quo licensing policy–if we’re free, you’re free. The flip side is that if you don’t want to publish your source code, you can pay for a license that allows that.”

“We’re not a religion, we’re not a cult, were not a charity–we’re a business,” he said. “There’s always going to be grassroots people…who see open source as a free ride, but there are corporate customers who are absolutely willing to pay for reliability, flexibility, support.”

No one who’d had the lightest involvement with the community would say something like that. Firefox is more robust and functional than IE because the community had their voice.

To the point, POSIX-compliant systems are intrinsically less vulnerable to virii because they were designed as network computers. Windows is fundamentally based on a kernel built as short term contract job. It was called QDOS, or (I’m not kidding) ‘Quick and Dirty Operating System.’ It was built to run a single-user computer– the network capabilities of Windows are a functional band-aid.

Linux and BSD (and by heritage, OSX), can install software in a systemic way without putting the system as a whole at risk. Because Windows doesn’t have a concept analogous to sudoers, the average user issues commands as an administrator. By proxy, so do the programs she is running. This is definitively insecure, and unavoidable without a ground-up reimplementation of the NT kernel.

This leaves us with Vista, a rat’s nest of aborted kernels groping for each other in the dark, expending half its system resources just to walk upright. My Ubuntu laptop uses a quarter of the system resources, smoothly animating Compiz effects. This is not a fair comparison.