We called it Free Software at first. It wasn't until we started calling it Open Source that the punditry line counts began creeping up higher than the code line counts. We had this baby and we were proud of it, and the deep rooted insecurity born of being the ridiculed and utterly misunderstood underdogs made us require the approval of business and Grandma Bessie before we could ourselves be satisfied.

Well, now we've got it, and in some ways Open Source is not better off because of it.

Thanks to the cavorting evangelists in the Ubuntu community who were converted on the strength of a cheaply-gotten sense of technical superiority over their peers who still use Windows 98, "Free" is now a dirty word since it stands so often in the way of converting more people, faster.

Free Software wasn't originally meant to be a cult with a membership statistics monkey on its back; the idea was, like, to be "Free."

Full story http://www.linux.com/feature/124564