Why open source is important (or free as in liberty)

An indication of how important open source is today can be found here. Via Mr Penguin's Twitter feed.

I'd also be inclined to add OpenOffice.org to the list. I had to design a newsletter the other day and it is truly a dream of a word-processing tool. Images dragged and dropped and stuck exactly where you wanted them to. A brilliant piece of software. And it's free - both as in beer as well as in liberty.