Bruce Perens responds to readers who reacted to his March 8 Perspectives column, "Deciphering the open-source war":

Patrick Schmitz correctly points out that it's easier for IBM and Sun to invest in open source, because they sell hardware that pays for it, while Microsoft does not. So yes, this explains why Microsoft doesn't like open source as much. What it doesn't explain is why Microsoft would deserve your money rather than Sun or IBM.

Jerry Plouffe wants to be protected from competition from open source but applauds our going after Microsoft. A century ago, there was a huge industry dedicated to filling the icebox in every home with ice. People harvested ice from lakes, saved it for a year in ice houses, and shipped it to warmer regions in boxcars. Then the Free Ice Movement promoted its refrigerators, which made ice on the spot, for only the cost of electricity. Some people said "ice should not be allowed to be free." To make it so would destroy an entire industry and put many people out of work. But Free Ice was better for the customer, and the market changed.

The capitalist system doesn't protect anyone from competition or from improvements that make a product obsolete. People need to change when the market changes.