Innovation and practicality are not the same things . Placing innovation before freedom is just as much a philosophical decision as the reverse. Innovation is

Innovation and practicality are not the same things . Placing innovation before freedom is just as much a philosophical decision as the reverse. Innovation is great for delivering new and better products, but it doesn't help much for allowing you to fix problems in the code you're using, avoid vendor lockin,or any of the other problems that free software can help solve. I agree that it is important to keep practicality in mind, but I think it is also important to keep in mind that pretty much any philosophy you choose will have different tradeoffs involved.