From: Bob Leif To: Team-Ada I hope that I have quoted Orwell's Animal Farm correctly. From: The New York Times, Monday, February 22, 1999, page C4, Compressed Data: "For the Big Corporation, 24-Hour Linux Support" "And as of today a small San Francisco-based start-up, Linuxcare Inc. will be offering large corporations an around-the-clock Linux support service." "An uninformed user is a bad thing," said Arthur Tyde 3d, chief executive of Linuxcare. the company's customers will be able to call for help at any hour, paying annual service rates up to $150,000, depending on what options they sign up for." Karl Marx never dreamed of the ultimate exploitation, the developers working for free! I might add, that although I do not like many things about Microsoft and its products, Microsoft, at least, pays its programmers. I wish to suggest again that the concept of making public the source text (Ada) or code (other less developed languages) is a very good idea. Conversely, giving up the right to profit from one's work can be agreeing to be exploited. I do not believe that the companies including IBM and there employees that sell or participate in the sales of Linux or other "free" software reduce their employees' compensation or corporate profits on any other part of the transaction.