This issue is about how we will organize our economy, what we will experience as social and as solidarity.
M$ being a representation of an old style organization, scraping max revenues out of ‘the market’ we don’t experience as right, or correct or fair, in as much as it feels wrong that we empty out recourses ‘belonging’ to future generations.

On the other hand we have to deal with things as they are now, and i doubt that computing as it is today would be there if it was not driven by the huge financial- and influence-gain desires as M$ has paraded for the best part of the last 10 years.

True free software would also imply true free food and housing for everyone, free cars and free energy.
Of course this can be done, and can be regulated in such a manner that at least basic needs are distributed fair and sufficient in such a manner that no one is exploited, nor given the means to exploit such facilitating circumstances.

So feeling the longing for a situation in which all is “free” one can not demean M$ alone.
It is a concept in development for as long as we are living in organized society’s.
We got rid of our king’s (and for some also our God’s), and of Marx and Lenin.
Now we have to get rid of the whole profit - market concept as driving God - King - Marx behind the endeavors of groups of people.

So, to get real free software we have to talk about the concept of true freedom in our daily lives.
Do you motivate yourself to take a job to get the work done that you see needs to be done, or do you take a job because it pays money?

As M$ is a product of its time, so the free software community’s are.
But they can only exist and develop when the true potential of free choice and responsibility is experienced within every member of such a society. Understanding full well that greed for power, greed for money, and greed for sensual gratification can be understood as a force of nature i am far from any optimistic standpoint that these will be somehow eliminated.

No, we have to change the direction of greed, and that means a paradigm shift as big as from proprietary software to free software.
so, lets start at a simple level.

Free education.
Free health care.
Free access to courts of law.
Free speech.

For that’s software to, and i think that if the community’s of free software keep developing they will have to start looking to a broader embedding than some hard disk’s and network cables, their concept of what free means must be part of how we look at each others work, rights and purpose as individual and as organization.

I think.

Hope that helps you understand what is being discussed here.

What I am getting at is why is not my car free, or my television, or my house? I see lots of companies making proprietary programs right next to free versions and they work In no way am I endorsing Microsoft or the partnership between Novell and them but it is still the end user that counts. If he supports using both type programs or chooses to not it is still his choice and no platform should dictate what one should use in their home for that is “Our freedom of choice”.

But don’t forget about Red Hat, Sun and more. They also did much. Creating GNOME stuff, documenting it…