A power outage last night shut down my work computer, so Windows took the opportunity, upon reboot, to add all kinds of crap to itself. I kept on getting fun (read: annoying) little balloon messages, including this one: "Update Java now... and get OpenOffice FREE". This "offer" struck me, since OpenOffice is already free. It always has been and hopefully always will be. It's a major cog in the world of open source software.

Open source, much as its name implies, means that the source code is available, so that (if you're clever enough) you can muck with the program, customizing it at code level. The wonderful thing is that many people do this, and all their tricks and customizations make it back into the distribution. So instead of a few programmers working in secret making the program do whatever they (or their bosses) want it to do, hundreds of programmers are working on the software, making it do what real people want it to do.

Trouble is, it tends to be hard to make money on open source--which is why Microsoft spends so much time and effort keeping its code secret. Which is fine, because I do believe that in an open market, the better product will prevail. Trouble is, Microsoft is doing everything it can to keep the market from opening.