Flutterby™! : Open Source again

Back from the Open Source Conference. I'm trying to organize my thoughts a bit for a longer essay. One of the problems with the shift from "free software" to "open source" is that every yahoo short a real business plan is slapping "open source" on their products in hopes that their user base will suddenly do the work necessary to make the business viable. On the other hand, there are some really great ideas out there being developed. Correction: On the discussion forum hosted by Dave Winer, Cam asked why there wasn't more discussion of Microsoft's .NET initiative. I confused them because Dave responded to Cam's first postings. My personal take? Because that's what people like Cam have been working on at Alphanumerica for quite a while. Everyone sees it for what it is, a late attempt to pull customers back into the fold with empty promises in order to starve competition, just like they've done before. Actually, I went for the open source bits, but the Perl sessions were generally better, partially because the Perl folks aren't as tied up in the politics, they're just having fun and solving problems, and they understand that community is what's made Perl work. And Damian Conway is a fantastic presenter. If you get the chance, watch him talk on underwater basket weaving. After I get some work done today and have some time to do some webbing I'll post a long list o' URLs, and work on my reactions to the open source bits.