On Feb 6, 2004, at 7:49 AM, Phil Mattison wrote:

> On the other, it
> seems a little cynical to build a public company on the backs of so 
> many
> unpaid contributors.

Lets ignore the fact that Linus himself and many other contributors 
became wealthy  because Red Hat essentially gave them stock before 
their IPO. Lets also set aside the fact that many  contributors are 
paid through one means or another. It still seems to me that if we 
reject the notion of building a distribution on volunteer contributions 
we end up in the SCO camp. Even MS and Apple see nothing wrong with 
rolling code contributed by the community into their project. Daryl and 
the boys do say that this is an ethical problem, though of course they 
do it.