As you probably know I am involved with the OpenBSD project, which also creates OpenSSH, the world-leading secure network protocol. What's interesting about OpenSSH is that most operating system vendors bundle it with their systems, including Apple, HP, Sun, IBM, Redhat - pretty well everybody except Microsoft. Since OpenSSH is licensed under the BSD Software License, they are allowed to do so. However, it is generally expected that if you get a lot of money out of some piece of free software, you will return some small amount of money to the sources. In fact, not one of these vendors has given anything (except for the odd loaner computer) back to OpenSSH. It's time for these vendors to wake up and start feeding the golden goose of BSD-licensed open source software, before they starve it to death.
See the OpenBSD press page for some news (March 2006) on this topic.

A school I do some work for is sponsoring a school in Africa, and they asked me to help them get a MS-Windows PC, but I didn't. I gently but firmly steered them to an open source *NIX, explaining both the technical and social advantages of open source and my take on African Debt. 'I can't solve the African Debt problems by myself, but I can do a tiny bit to slow it down. Every time we export an MS-Windows computer there, we are exporting at least $1,000 in debt. Debt that they will have to pay to upgrade new releases of Windows over the expected lifetime of the computer. Debt to pay for Microsoft Word. Debt to pay for extra memory and disk space needed for Microsoft bloatware. In this context, Open Source means never having to say you're sorry.' And you know what? They listened. Open Source Systems and OpenOffice rule!

This would be hard to believe but it's on the CBC. It could happen to anyone who's ever used a credit card on-line. The intersection of the consequences of an overbearing police state and too much 'political correctness' leading to the attitude that anything goes -- regardless of facts or evidence -- in prosecuting alleged offenders in certain classes of crimes. Police need to be reminded of an old but good document named Magna Carta.