And that gets to the real story here: Presenting Ball as a hero of open source blows away the contention that it's about free-as-in-speech. All Ball cares about is free-as-in-beer, as his own words show: "I'm not paying any per-seat license. I'm not buying any new computers... I'm not making calls to Red Hat; I don't need to... If all you need is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a word processor... For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser?"
So in other words, Ball wants people to have as little software as possible, he doesn't want to buy that software, he doesn't buy hardware and he doesn't even spend any money on support contracts. There is in short no cash flowing from Ball into any part of the computing industry. Well, okay, he's got an IT staff, so that's a little bit of money going into the industry I guess... but then again, he claims they have less work to do now, so presumably he'll downsize them sooner or later. That's assuming he doesn't just outsource them to India, since according to Ball, that staff doesn't have to go to people's desks but can work at the server.
By the precise definition of the word, Ball is a parasite. He is the ultimate free rider. And the open-source community chooses to praise him for that.
Imagine a world in which every CEO was like Ball. Just how many software industry jobs would there be then? If someone can describe to me the process by which Ball funds the creation of new software or the maintenance of existing software, I'm all ears. Pressed to explain exactly how an entire industry is supposed to function by giving its product away for free-as-in-beer, the open-sourcers either retreat to vaguely mumbling about support contracts, or they loudly change the subject to free-as-in-speech. This interview with Ball prety much makes a mockery of both those contentions, but nevertheless they hold this guy up as their ideal CEO. I find that very revealing.