At some point, all operating systems will be free or close to it just like a great many virtualization products are now. Money will be made on service and support, customizations, etc of those products. Intellectual property is something we’ve gone overboard on in this country in many cases and the biggest screamers are the ones the least likely to be stolen from and are probably the biggest thieves. I guess the free market does indeed work until somebody puts out something for free...LOL
I've tried the conversion from Microsoft Office to Open Office a couple of times now but the latest version is finally going to hook me, it looks like. Nice job, IMHO.
And yeah, I've been preaching for years now that what we're likely to see is apps like Microsoft Office running on open-source OS's. So what am I running on my laptop at the moment? Yeah, you guessed it - Open Office on top of Windows 7. Sheesh. ;-)