The fundamental right to property is derived from the ownership of ones body and mind.

Labor is the physical extension of your life force.

Physical Property is an extension of your life force used upon physical objects from nature that becomes your property; ie I collect straw and weave it into a basket. This is my labor forced onto natural objects thus it becomes my property, for my exclusive use unless I give up my right to it by abandoning it also know as not asserting my rights to that property.

An extension of physical labor is Intellectual Property that is my mental labor to create Art, Science, Spoken Words, Written Words, Software, ect.
When someone creates Intellectual Property they are creating with their life force, also to manifest that Intellectual Property for others to benefit from it must be created physically fist. When one copyrights something they are asserting their rights that this is their exclusive property.

Libertarianism when it comes to Property Rights is the extension of basic Natural Law. Most animals are coherent enough to respect natural property rights, watch a bear protect its property be it a kill or its land ie territory. Here is where it gets fuzzy for most people. When you are walking out in the woods and find a basket laying on the ground without anyone there to assert ownership rights, it is assumed to be free to use as wished by the next person who discovers it even though it has a sticker that says property of “my name”. When I come back to the spot where I left my basket in the forest and find it missing I cannot piss and moan because the natural law of finders keepers comes into play. I did not assert my rights to the property so someone else did. boo hoo

When you put your Intellectual Property on the web you are essentially leaving your basket out in the woods, who in their right mind would not assume that the basket would not disappear, or in this case be copied.

The assertion that Libertarianism rejects any type of property rights is ludicrous, it is fundamental to the philosophy of freedom. Also in the Libertarian philosophy of freedom rejects forced coercion of labor or property. This above all else differentiates Communism form Libertarianism in that Communism relies on forced coercion of labor and property because you and your property belong to the group as a whole. BIG DIFFERENCE THERE

When a person chooses to give his/her labor to Open Source he/she is giving to the community freely without coercion. He/she is not asserting his/her rights to his/her property. This has nothing to do with Communism at all because it is FREELY given.

It becomes difficult to beat Open Source software when it has the same starting point as any other proprietary softwares, but when it comes beating an already established industry accepted software like Microsoft Windows, its penetration into desktops is about 1%. Most of the people who despite of having the technical caliber to deal with any issues arising with desktop Linux, or who might benefit more by using Linux do not use Linux because of many applications or device supports they might need which they can only get from Windows. Since the market acceptance of Linux is really less, most application developers and device manufacturers do not bother supporting Linux, and since they don’t support Linux, the users don’t use Linux thereby market acceptance never rises.

I myself don’t use Microsoft Windows for about over six months now, but unfortunately I cannot fully rely on Linux myself, it is in a dual boot mode with Mac OS X 10.5(which is an amazing OS, and beats both Windows and Linux hands down in terms of its design). The reason is simple because Ubuntu sucks at supporting my hardware, and Adobe’s support to Linux is just torture, nothing created by Adobe works on my Linux, and I really need those utilities so I have to use OS X(from Flash, Creative Suite 3, photoshop, after effects, even Adobe Flex Builder).

I read Cathedral and the Bazaar about 10 years ago when it first came out, and at that time it we all believed that software support and merchandise was the way any open source software company can sustain itself.

10 years from them if you really ask me, I don’t think that model is possible. In fact I don’t think anyone believes that this model is feasible. Back then, it was also believed that since Open Source software have their source code open for anybody’s inspection, the bugs and the security leaks can be easily found therefore the open source software has an inherent advantage over closed source software. Unfortunately today it just isn’t a major advantage over a closed source software. With cheap labor available in India, the closed source software companies establish testing centers in India and their software delivers quite comparable bug fixing as much as open source software does.

About linux not intending to replace every layman’s windows copy with linux then what is it made for? Who is it made for?

I am a power user, and I do development (I don’t play games, but that is a huge deal dropper for many people), and Adobe Flex Builder is not supported for Linux (I guess I can program everything else on it. I like to watch movies, listen to music, but my iPod (which has its maximum features available through iTunes) is not supported with all the futures.
If I have to watch online videos for a lot of websites I have to login back to OS X because of Flash 9-Flash 10 issues.
Audio blues are just without end. Ubuntu Jaunty broke sound on so many systems, mic doesn’t work, somehow I fixed the sound, but when I plug in the headphones the audio still plays from my speakers.

You should watch this presentation, its called “Linux Sucks”, its a brilliant presentation which every Linux supporter must watch:
http://lunduke.com/?p=429

If a government pays every organization which kills innocent people, the organizations/corporations will keep on murdering people, and no matter how much you fight them, how much you blame them, you aren’t really dealing with the problem.

Similarly since government is providing artificial monopoly to the organizations, they will utilize it. They don’t really care whether its moral or immoral. The day Linux will come into a position to provide them with more profits, they will start using Linux.

Therefore right now what we need is put Open Source movement on boosters. If the government’s monopoly reward program was removed, the companies will find it much more profitable to use an open technology and add their marginal labor in it and use it for themselves(and allow it exist for everybody else), but since that’s not happening any time soon, the individual users must give Open source softwares a contribution from their own labor.

I have seen so many of Linux based artists telling Adobe that they will be willing to pay for Adobe Photoshop if they ever port it to Linux. Now the open source equivalent of Photoshop is Gimp, but its not that versatile as Photoshop. And the SAME people who are willing to pay for Adobe Photoshop for Linux, either don’t even think of donating that $200-$300 to the Gimp Development Team, or think(because of what I called the Communist Open Source thinking) that they are NOT SUPPOSED to donate money to an Open Source software.

Open Source movement is not supposed to be a humanitarian non-profit movement, you should not do it because you just wanna do good to the humanity. You should support it because you don’t believe in any kind of aggression, and that you benefit a lot from the existing open source softwares.