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Prologue

I had just finished reading an interview with Jeremy Allison [1] by ChangeLog, the Japanese subsidiary of LWN, when I called up my parents to tell them some news about my professional life. As I spoke to them on the phone, the interview I'd just read kept ringing in my mind.

I've known Jeremy for some time, from working with him in the Samba team, and I've enjoyed the fact that he earns his living writing free software. I also enjoyed the fact that I would have the same opportunity; it just so happens that I was calling my parents to tell them I had just been offered a position at a Free Software company, myself. My parents were curious about what Free Software was all about. Since I had never had such a good opportunity to evangelize to them, I couldn't miss this one.

Trying to find a good analogy to explain to my parents --both doctors-- why Free Software has increasingly gained more acceptance, I recalled the interview I had just read.

In the interview, Jeremy had said:

``I think you'll see once open source software colonizes a niche, it will completely dominate it.''
Jeremy Allison [1]

Thinking of this, a complete argument relating Free Software with (my views and recollections of) Darwin's theory of natural selection [2] formed in my mind and I presented it to my parents. Since the argument seemed quite successful in convincing them about the advantages of Free Software, and how a company that gave away the software it wrote could succeed, I thought I'd write it up and share it with everybody else.


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