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Google desperately wants you to download Picasa; if anything, The GIMP seems to be designed to scare off newcomers. It reminds me all too clearly of that early internet culture when AOL "newbies" were flamed when they posted a comment to a forum. The same defence mechanism is keeping users - customers - away from the site, and until that time the open-source movement will remain a ghetto.

I imagine open-source enthusiasts firing up Thunderbird with a "But that's the point. We're not about the packaging, we're about what the software does." And I admire that, I really do. I hate the fact that so many software updates appear to be more about taking £30 from people's pockets than focusing on what users actually want; and that, similarly, so much of what the world's largest software companies seem to do is motivated by shareholder needs.

But until you can say "open source" to a non-IT friend and they reach for an OpenOffice CD rather than the tomato ketchup, Microsoft can rest easy.