This glass is half-full

Only responding to the last paragraph:  I think these "Stop worrying about politics and get
back to coding!" calls are what get us into these messes.

If money is going to a charity, and a corrupt company is redirecting that money into its own
pockets, the solution is not "Quick! Increase the money!".  The solution is that someone has
to care about that money helping the people it is intended to help.

The years of anti-software-patent campaigning taught us that programming doesn't solve all
problems.  Companies like Microsoft have realised that politics and advertising are two of the
free software community's weak spots.  They can't tackle us in terms of producing good
software, so they're tackling us where we are weak.  We have to beef up our work on public
policy and awareness.