A whole bunch of untrue claims and other trolling, all of which is about 10 years out of date. I'm not all for open source (it has its uses but not all software should be open source) but I am all for good arguments.

"If developers give away their software, where is the food going to come from? Lots, perhaps most, open source developers have salaried jobs. OSS is a side project, but if you want it to be your money maker, perhaps it isn't for you."

Much OSS is developed commercially by people who are paid to develop OSS.

"Do you want to focus on managing an open source community or focus on your customers? Managing forks? Maintaining control?"

You don't have to do any of these things.

"There are myriad OSS licenses. These licenses are like viruses. If you use code that contains them, your code contains them. They attach themselves to everything you write and everything you distribute."

False. GPL is viral but not all open source licenses operate like GPL. He's confusing open source with copyleft.

"I've lost emails on two different occassions because of bugs in Thunderbird."

That's nice, but I've paid for bugs too. What I want to see is an accurate survey of software quality between proprietary software and widely used open source.

"I don't even want to count the number of Linux distributions available." "How many browsers are built on top of webkit or gecko?"

Sounds like he'd really be upset counting the number of distributions of, say, BSD's TCP/IP code. Linux is a kernel, it's not a usable product by itself. Webkit is most of a browser, but it's not an application. Same with Gecko. Maybe it needs to be made more obvious that a lot of open source projects build components rather than finished applications, but if you don't grasp that concept, you're not qualified to argue this point.

"Okay, well the fact that there are multiple distros makes the OSS world more confusing for the end user and what the end user wants is simplicity."

So he wants a monopoly on browsers and operating systems?

He doesn't want to be "confused" by the fact that someone makes a Linux for servers and a Linux for datacenters and a Linux for Google's own personal compute cluster and a Linux for wristwatches and toasters? Then stop shopping for datacenter and wristwatch software. The number of desktop Linux distros designed and widely adopted for consumer use is fairly small.

"You'll spend a lot of your time doing code reviews instead of writing your own code."

Only if you really want to. It's not a requirement of the license that you actively maintain the code and manage contributions from others.

"You may end up with too many cooks in the kitchen."

You can always close the door and inform them they can experiment on your recipe in their own kitchen. Don't most open source projects have a small core of dedicated contributors anyway? And the ability to selectively allow newcomers into this core? I can't just walk in and start fucking around with the Linux kernel because Linus and crew won't let me. What I can do is fork Linux, create Philinux, and break it to my heart's content. And if it sucks, no one will notice.

"If you open source your software your monetization options become limited."

True. But I don't see the point of this argument--you can open source software that you don't intend to sell, or use open source software, without having to open source the software you're trying to sell. That goes without saying.

"How many billion dollar open source software companies are there? How many closed source?"

Sometimes instead of building your own private park on your corporate headquarters, you can put the corporate headquarters next to a city park and volunteer for park cleanup.

Linux was built for free because Linus wanted to build a kernel. It's maintained because some individuals and some companies want to invest time and money in it. Just because Linux isn't a product of some company doesn't mean it's worthless, or that it can't be used to make money.

"Imagine telling...attorneys to open source their skills."

They do. In fact, the law itself is open source--each and every line of "code" is published by the government in volumes of leather-bound books titled "US Code" and the like.

As for private laws, like contracts, some lawyers write up example contracts that you can copy and use, and publish them. Of course, like with code, it takes someone who knows the language to make sure that boilerplate applies to your specific situation.

"So the argument that the consumer of OSS is free to modify it to do whatever is a myth. It just doesn't happen like they say it does and most end users don't know how to do it even if they have the source."

Google is the consumer of Linux, and they do modify it to do whatever. Okay, maybe you're not going to modify your email client to not lose emails anymore, but that doesn't mean there's no use to having the code to anyone, ever, in all of computing.

"Plus, the black box makes it harder for hackers to understand."

Security by obscurity? Is someone trotting out that old argument again?