As fans of independent music and art, one has to appreciate the DIY mentality of alternative operating systems, such as the open source and passionately freeLinux, or the loveable underdog Mac OS X. Breakdown Industries, for example, is written on an Apple Powerbook and hosted on a cheap Linux box. And it really isn't much of a stretch to compare Linus Torvalds to Ian MacKaye, or Steve Jobs to Steve Albini. So who do you root for when your own worst enemy, the Recording Industry Association of America, decides that they've had enough with the never-ending viruses and downtime on Windows and switches their website to Linux? While this is a smart decision by the RIAA (and one that 70% of all sites have already made), it is tribute to the power of open source that it can be used by the good, the bad, and the ugly alike. Now if only SCO would sue the RIAA, perhaps we'd have a fight worth cheering about.
