The free software world aims to share their knowledge and software in order for all to gain towards a common goal. The proprietary software world aims to hoard their software, to hide their discoveries, to let others go through the discovery process themselves rather than to innovate from the shoulders of those who went before them.

Stallman characterises the view of the proprietary vendors as: ``If you share with your neighbour, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make them.''. If I enjoyed a piece of music or a novel, should I be inhibited from lending the CD or the book to my neighbour?

Eric Raymond, in his ``Musings on Linux and Open Source'' in the book ``The Cathedral and the Bazaar'' makes compelling arguments for Free and Open Source Software development. Some of his points, paraphrased, are:

• The quality of the software is maintained by a simple strategy of releasing the software to the general public every week and receiving feedback from hundreds of users within days: release early and release often.
• Users can be cultivated into becoming developers if your software is serving a need of theirs. They will add functionality to suit their particular goals, and this functionality is likely to be useful to others.