The title of this post is a reference to the way Free and Open Source software in general, and Linux specifically, have shown the way to escape the prison of proprietary software and the concept, perhaps, of intellectual property.

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, he states:

The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!

Why do I get the feeling he somehow had Bill Gates , et al, in mind!

But there is, of course, a second meaning to the subject of this post: LAMP – the Linux/Apache/MySQL/(Perl, PHP, Python) server platform on which so many web sites (including this one) are built. All free, as in free speech and as in free beer. It is BOTH of these types of freedom that have allowed the growth of the Internet and the spread of the free interchange of ideas (both good and bad) that is the byproduct of the Internet’s popularity.

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