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If You Can't Beat 'Em ...
It seems clear that the proprietary vendors are suffering at the hands of their open source competitors--otherwise, why would they be buying them or bothering to denigrate them ("It's Open Season," Feb. 20, 2006)?

As to the prediction that open source companies will wither away, in the past two weeks I've been contacted by companies selling vertical apps that want to put a portion of their product line into open source release as a way of increasing adoption. That sounds like open source marching further up the stack as proprietary companies recognize the need for lower-cost sales and marketing.

Bernard Golden
CEO, Navica, San Carlos, Calif.

Internet Ignorance
The New Jersey assemblyman who found it surprising that his attempts to regulate content on the Internet drew harsh criticism from all over the world is only admitting in public that he's totally clueless ("Internet Backlash Stalls New Jersey Civility Bill," March 14, 2006).

News can travel almost instantly to anywhere online. The cluelessness of the New Jersey lawmaker alone should disqualify him from attempting to regulate the Internet.

Brian Lynch
Systems Analyst, FYI Econometrics, Austin, Texas