While that may be true; if a company knows that they're being pirated - Apple, Adobe, Windows inclusive - they're gonna have the stance of "Fine. Sooner than later, they will pay."

Adobe's Warnock has stated as much about Photoshop - 1 million or so licenses, way more than that out there. Sure, people could use GIMP, some shops have switched almost wholesale to that if they don't do print.

But as it stands, it's a difference of mentality that people are arguing about when they talk about Windows, its ecosystem, and Linux and its ecosystem.

It's not about being dependent on any thing; if you need help with Fedora, you might have to pay Red Hat. If you need help with Maemo, you might have to wait for Nokia or this community to help you. If you need help with Microsoft products, you might have to pay for that.

In all instances, you are dependent upon something other than yourself if it is out of your scope of ability and/or expertise. To say otherwise is true folly.

Linux is a free way to get a lot done. When you need very specific help, it sometimes sucks that there isn't a centralized place for help - but there's a lot of good natured folks that know a hell of a lot more than I. And Microsoft is so damn full of bugs, the centralized place for help became a necessity - and something of a crutch... still wasn't enough so I became a MCSE to resolve my own probs and be able to help others.

But as it stands, both directions (FOSS vs. closed source) end up feeding our addiction to gadgets, computers and Internet.

What Linus had in mind was basically the same as what Gates had in mind... a simple way to use a pile of silicon to make life a bit easier. Gates went about it in a very "buy out your competition" manner whereas Linux became a community way to avoid being what Microsoft had become - full of bugs, license unfriendly and ultimately something that was used to go into corporations almost like a trojan and build dependency.

But in the long-term, they both serve our needs and addictions.