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Drivel: This is an interesting letter as it so acutely illustrates the fundamental shift that has occurred on the Internet in the past two years from free to for fee, or advertising sponsored, services. Email and hosting services such as those provided by Sourceforge.net are not free, despite how they are offered to the users of the service. This is also a great illustration of the infamous battle between the developer and the businessman. The developer thinks that if I don't like what my "free" service is doing I can just switch. OK, sure, but at what cost? The cost of switching can be calculated by totally the time it takes to perform the switch and multiplying by the person's hourly rate of compensation. If the person performs the switch on his or her "own time" then they decided to do the switch instead of something else, which also has a monetary value. The businessman understands this plods forward. This is economics 101, which, after almost eight years, the Internet community as a whole is just starting to grasp even after the down turn. Everything operates according to some basic rule set that can not be changed; economics, law, and programming are not as different as one might think at their core. This letter is like reverse of Dilbert in that Dilbert is asking the less intelligent question and the end user has the answer. In a sense, we are all Dilbert from our own perspectives.
##Open Letter to SourceForge. Upset by some SourceForge advertising policies, David Sugar, Bayonne Project leader, writes an open letter to the SourceForge staff and receives a response. [Linux Journal] 11:30:54 PM 
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