Is Linux anti-American?

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For some time now Linux supporters have been trying to distance themselves from the concept that it is Communistic by nature and anti-capitalistic by design. These efforts took a rather large step back last week when Richard Stallman, president and founder of the Free Software Foundation, played the nationalist card and convinced Cuba to go with Linux.

Saying that copyrights violate basic morality is certainly consistent, but probably doesn't play that well for much of the professional market for Linux, which probably lives under copyright protection for verticals like pharmaceuticals, publishing, manufacturing and technology.

With a proprietary product someone clearly owns the brand. I could argue that Microsoft does perhaps the poorest job of maintaining the positive qualities of its brand of any company I cover, but at least they have not positioned it as being anti-American. At least not yet. Granted, large companies can make mistakes because they are made up of humans, but there are a number of protections in place that should reduce the exposure of a company product suddenly being the poster child of terrorists or other hostile entities.

In fact, who protects the Linux brand and would be responsible from making sure it didn't show up on a terrorist site with the words "death to America"?