REH asked: > Just a question. Who pays the salaries for all of these [Linux] > folks doing free things and giving up their ideas for nothing? The KGB. After all, Linux is a communist plot to destroy the greatest free enterprise of all times (Micro$oft). No, wait, that was the Cato Institute's point of view. ;o) (Actually, Micro$oft is a communist plot to harm the Western economies -- see http://www.elsop.com/wrc/humor/ms_kgb.htm ) Seriously, to answer your question: The salaries of Linux co-developers (or rather, co-refiners) are paid by their employers/customers/whatever -- they're students and professional users/develpers who are doing this as kinda "professional hobby". However, this has nothing to do with "giving up their ideas for nothing"! -- quite on the contrary: They can *implement* their ideas, and they get a good operating system (which is less buggy and doesn't depend on the whims of the great dictator B.G.) in return, and politically they contribute to the prevention of a totalitarian software/OS dictatorship -- see http://www.boycott-ms.org/summary.html for a summary on the concept. Aren't these great motivations ? In this context it should also be mentioned that Micro$oft is (ab)using millions of developers and users worldwide as (involuntary) beta-testers of M$ software, and not even for free -- these users have to pay for the software and even for the help (if any), and they can't even fix the bugs themselves (because they don't have the source code) ! That's the typical neo-liberal "privatize the profits, socialize the costs" scheme at its "best"... Chris
