This news seems shocking to some but makes perfect sense to me. It turns out that 75% of the code that had been submitted in the last 12 and a half months was by paid programmers. Opinions vary on this topic. Some feel that this is a break away from the ideals of free software. I think it is only fair that an individual gets paid for their hard work. Even people who write code for Linux need to pay the bills and put food on the table since you rarely find anything that is free as in free Beer. Sorry I just had to throw the free Beer in.

An individual who is getting paid enough to make a living at programing may be able to focus more on that work and on the code.

Still there is one concern, that Linux will become so commercialized that it will gradually turn into a project that is powered by proprietary software. On the other hand we are talking about 2.8 million lines of code and 25% of that

is still being written by those who are not getting paid to write code. And when was the last time anyone even saw a tv ad for Linux. Perhaps that concern is a bit premature.

Unfortunately most Linux users do use proprietary software and once a proprietary solution is available there may not be any open source alternatives developed as everyone gets nice and comfortable with proprietary software.

Then some talk about using strictly open source products while at the same time they push the idea of running windows through virtualization or dual booting into windows. I too use virtualbox for occassionally running Windows in Linux. But really which is worse using proprietary software in an open environment or using Windows on a regular basis. I would rather be able to spend more time in Linux even if it means using some proprietary products inside Linux versus booting a Windows install.