Promoting open source

Bruce Perens is advocating a legal defense fund for open source users. Interesting idea. We need the first law on these cases to be good law, which is best achieved with good lawyers on both sides.
Meanwhile- someone last week took Copyfight, CIS, Creative Commons and others to task for using Movable Type instead of open source blogging software, suggesting that using a closed-source product was hypocritical or harmful to the open source movement. I beg to differ. It's not the case that only one business model for software development and distribution can survive, and if you force that choice, it won't be good for open source (at least in the short run). There's a reason you don't chase a tiger into a corner! Showing that both models can exist side by side without open source threatening old fashioned closed-source software helps, not harms. (nice kitty). In my case, I use what works for my colleagues, as I've been doing since I started working in the legal field. Maybe I'll try an open source blogging program for my next, off-campus, blog.