Joel on Software has a nice piece on how large corporations are adopting free software. Perhaps esr's dream is becoming realized after all, just a bit more slowly than he predicted. In any case, I don't care much about big corps and free software. The lifeblood of the movement is still individual, human people, and will probably remain so for quite some time.
The subtext of yesterday's async musing was to express skepticism that all the city/fiber/dock/boat mechanism in Mithril was actually needed. But, of course, not having seen the design in detail, I can't really criticize it.