3 or 4 Years

If you average the FOUR years of patent licenses/litigation costs over the THREE years of installs, then yes, its about $21.50. If you assume windows sales were constant over a FOUR year period (at the same level as before), then the cost per user drops to $16.10.

Does the author explain the mismatch in time periods? If not then this is a pretty poor piece of research. I could equally claim that MS is amortising $4.3b over all the copies of Windows Vista sold today (or over all the Windows Vista sales in China... http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/only_244_copies_of_genuine_windows_vista_sold_in_china.php).

Java, the most popular OSS language by far, ...

Can you post your references to backup the statement "Java, the most popular OSS language by far, [...]"?

I'd also be keen to know how you define "OSS language".

A quick count of packages on my debian box shows there are some 40 times more packages requiring of the C library than of a java runtime. This probably isn't representative, but I bet I can guess 10 high profile C projects for every high profile Java project you can name.

Waste of Time

A short list of interesting points entirely missed by the writer of this article:

* The distinction between a license and a contract;

* The distinction between free speech and free beer;

* The differences between GPLv3 and previous versions of the GPL;

* The likely uptake of GPLv3 by the free software community;

* The implications of GPLv3 compatibility with the DFSG/OSD.

Only someone new to the field trying to be deliberately pig-headed could conceive of a GPLv3 article which doesn't touch on any of the above points. What we got was an article loaded with superficial rhetoric and light on actual facts.

I'm trying desperately to stop myself from launching into a line-by-line critique of this diatribe. Boiling it down, the only point of the article is that legal advice costs money. Stop the presses.