From the Scobleizer comes a link to Plaxo, which makes a plugin for Outlook and Outlook Express that allows for automatic updating of contact information. Seems nice, but no extensions for Mozilla Mail or Thunderbird yet. Still, any company that has a blog (and it's a real blog, with Movable Type! No Trackback, though) is innovative. Not entirely sure about the purpose of the "How Plaxo Works" section, though.

Another of Scobleizer's posts was to a diatribe by Clemens Vasters about free software. Written in the format of an open letter to a young programmer, it makes the claim that no money is to be made by writing free software, and that only large, already-established companies profit from it - by using others' work.

The whole thing about "free software" is a lie. It's a dream created and made popular by people who have a keen interest in having cheap software so that they can drive down their own cost and profit more or by people who can easily demand it, because they make their money out of speaking at conferences or write books about how nice it is to have free software.

IBM, HP, and other large companies known primarily by their acronyms did not create free software. Good people like RMS and ESR did. And while one can release all of their software under a BSD-style license, there are other alternatives available. If Vasters knew more about open source, he would understand that.

Then again, I am just an idealistic college student, without "a car, a house, and a family." What do I know?