Re: Don't panic
"It's like in Dune, where history forgets the princes and emperors"
- Doesn't a Dune ref. inevitably come down to Microsoft being the God Emperor? 30 odd years of tyranny in tech years may well equate to 3000. Leto II had a plan in order to ensure humanities survival through the Golden Path, knowing after generations of being cooped up in an oppressive regime humanity would scatter further into the Universe. Microsoft unfortunately isn't planning on it's own demise (at least not intentionally), as Emperors go it's more a Shaddam IV. In Dune, history was a topic, Princes and Emperors were never forgotten, at least not their parts in the mythology of the religion of Mua'dib, their place in the Dune Tarot or their mistakes as academics once more plied their trade after the God Emperor (he killed historians).
Apologies, I'm a complete utter nerd and geek when it comes to Dune.
Closed Source will always be around, not least in the Military and Secret Services, the tin hat paranoiacs.
I generally write 'Linux (quite frankly GNU/Linux is a hassle to write, where an apostrophe will do). I certainly don't underestimate the contribution of GNU. Linux the kernel would be nothing but a footnote on wikipedia without the GNU userland to fill it out in the early 90s, but perhaps the Hurd would be in a much better state today, and we'd all be either BSD or GNU Hurd users.