Respected author, anti-nazi and pro-marijuana campaigner J.X.Doležal published probably the most controversial article about the Firefox browser and the open source community. I will not point at the factual mistakes he made in his article, because others already did it (for example root.cz from the Internet Info family).

I want to share my surprise about what nobody mentioned. For many people (including myself), free software is about having fun in the first place. Writing it, using it or modifying it to meet your needs. It’s not always about the money. Many people prefer Linux as the OS kernel, Apache every time they need the web server and Firefox for browsing the web. Not because it’s the best thing they can have for the least amount of money, but simply because they have more fun with free software than with commercial software. And at last but not least, when you pay for something you expect that it will bring you more money. That’s how the business works today.

One observation in the end: I don’t need replacement for any free software, I always replace commercial software with free software. But this is out of the scope of my article.