Recent developments highlight the conflict between two principles of the information economy. One, the old one, says that value is premised on restricting access to information, the other, the new one, says that value is based on the free circulation of information:

“Although desktop users may prefer distributions of Linux which are free (as in beer) as well as free (as in freedom), businesses that rely on this software for serving products and services online and maintain internal development platforms and networks (as openDemocracy does), often pay for “enterprise” Linux distributions, such as Red Hat’s Fedora or Novell’s SuSe. Unlike their proprietary colleagues at Microsoft, who make money licensing owned code, Novell and Red Hat spend the fees paid for “enterprise” products on providing regular support and security updates. Net profits from Linux-related sales run into the tens of millions. Thus an open pool of shared knowledge fosters a vibrant knowledge economy around it.

now however Microsoft claims that Linux code violates a number of patents currently held at its Redmond campus.

read the excellent summary at openDemocracy.net