Re: Don Mitchell
If you want a principles fight Mr Mitchell, I'm quite willing to give you one.
Watching a market of people constantly manipulated into consuming a single capitalist system busting product should be enough to raise the heckles of any true blood capitalist. How the free hand of the market has been tied down by a lack of market regulation of monopoly power is a travesty worth political introspection. See Adam Smith on monopolies.
The fact that the product in question is an information and production tool involved in business, industry, government and social organisation makes it a social and political problem as much as it is an economic drain.
Now, those who are cheerleaders for the Free Software world are doing so for social and political reasons as much as for technical excellence rationale. Those who are promoting Microsoft and Apple do so because of their emotional attachment to certain brands and products. Very rarely have I ever heard a logical reason for using Windows that wasn't because someone's freedoms were already stolen.
As to your general point about politics replacing substance, well you know I think I read somewhere that practicalism is much like masturbation, some say it causes blindness.