ago). Quite a while ago, I was a PeopleSoft super-consultant for less than a year, working in Texas and Alabama during the week and flying back to Calgary for/during the weekend. I let about 80,000 air-miles expire because I had had ALL the flying and Hotels I ever needed. I still basically feel that way. I believe Winter is referring to the fact that nothing in the US Tech business is independent of VC ownership. VC culture is very against GPL for various reasons. Other parts of the world have other uses for technology beyond getting rich and Venture Capital to which GPL is still very relevant. Even if it were true that 'nothing in the US Tech business is independent of VC ownership' (which it obviously is not) your reasoning would still be wrong, because any technology business, VC-backed or not, wants to know that it can do binary-only releases safely. This is a phenomenon common to technology businesses the world over, and is not limited to the US. @Patrick GPL projects are still on the "rise" in Debian. Including v3. Outside the USA, the legal and patent situations are completely different. Patent trolls are aslmost unheard of and court cases are short. Both SCO and Oracle would have been stopped in court. Actually, SCO was silenced in two weeks. I believe Winter is referring to the fact that nothing in the US Tech business is independent of VC ownership. Completely untrue, unless you think (for example) that IBM