The New York Times > Technology > Knowing Their Politics by the Software They Use:
“It may be that the populist-versus-establishment dynamic plays out as Democrat versus Republican in this election,” Mr. Weitzner said. “But the open-source movement is a populist phenomenon, enabled by the Internet, and not a partisan force in any traditional sense of politics.”
The lone trait common to open-source supporters, according to Mr. Torvalds, is individualism. Politically, he said, that can manifest itself as independence from either political party. “But it also shows up as a distrust of big companies,” Mr. Torvalds wrote, “so it’s not like the individualism is just about politics.”
Interesting how much this debate spills into different areas. Recall that the file pilfering story of earlier this year was linked to improperly secured servers running the Leading Brand: it is possible to make any system unsecure, but for some reason it happens more frequently there.
And the quote “There was no pressure. We were free to use whatever software we thought worked best” about the selection of MSFT, couple with the claim that security and data privacy were key drivers doesn’t really add up. Oh, well, there’s always room for people who need to be told what to think.