I can’t think of a better use of the term “creative capitalism” than to apply it to open source businesses.

As I recently wrote in a comment of my article “Overwhelm their Fears with Open Source“:

I whole heartedly believe that sealed systems are holding back are growth in its role as fundamental part of our self-centered, greed based society.

Open source is an opportunity, not a business plan (sic business model), not a solution in itself. The opportunity is curiosity, exploration, and innovation, and in a global community this can far exceed any proprietary model.

Sure, you have to be more creative how you pay your bills and make your fortunes today, but it is your only opportunity to consistently better peoples lives and have a lasting legacy.

The fantastic development is that curiosity and exploration will triumph in our life time — if we don’t destroy the planet in the interim — because of us increasingly using technology to connect with people from all the world.

The greatest stumbling point is education, not education of what open source or free culture is, but basic education. Most of the world doesn’t have access to the education to be curious, understand the systems they are curious about, and benefit from their curiosity.

Ironically, Bill Gates, who more than any other single person in personal computing missed the opportunity to take us in this one area beyond our petty selves, today is leading in giving the world’s children the education they so desperately need.

My brother mentioned to me a few weeks ago seeing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on 60 Minutes. This interview by Lesley Stahl with Mark didn’t disappoint.

The interview can be found in Kara Swisher article “Facebook: The Entire ‘60 Minutes’ Segment” Unlike Kara, I didn’t expect a “big wet kiss”, but Kara always compliments her excellent journalism with cynical editorial — for some reason I really enjoy it.

Kara also complains about no mention of MySpace, but I wonder how much rivalry there really is for 60 Minutes’ audience. I know very few people personally that are active on MySpace — and those that are, are almost all are in bands.

I also disagree that “it hits all the high (and low) points of the Facebook saga”. It’s hits make for a balanced 15 minute piece. It misses the headlines in the news about children’s safety on Facebook and the Beacon fiasco being near deja vu of the News Feed and Mini-Feed fiasco a year before.

It also likely ends with a negative feeling for Mark and the Facebook team. Possibly, by reordering and going into more detail on the highs, people might appreciate what a phenomenon Facebook is — but maybe it isn’t necessary as people already know it is, because they are using it each week.

Likely not (yet) interesting to the 60 Minutes audience is Facebook’s contributions to open source. My former Flock co-worker Ari Steinberg build and announced the Facebook Toolbar for Firefox

All my circles of friend and acquaintances at least known of Facebook, and many use it regularly. I greatly admire the Facebook experience and Mark and teams ability to solve problems others either haven’t tried or have failed at.

Friday, Feb 1st Update: Kara Swisher yeterday reported Chatty Zuckerberg Tells All About Facebook Finances which includes:

Revenue for Facebook for 2007 will be $150 million, as has been widely reported. But for 2008, Zuckerberg projected revenue to be increased to $300 to $350 million.

More interesting was the news that Facebook would spend $200 million next year on capital expenditures, which is a whole lot of servers.

By the way, more expenses, noted chatty Mark, those employee levels would rise to more than 1,000 in 2008 from 450 now.

Danny Sullivan, Dave Mcclure, and others comment that it doesn’t sound like an inviting situation for potential employees hoping to make their fortunes. But Baher Al Hakim suggests this is a “a more-realistic financial outlook” and that there is opportunity to exceed these, because to date they have been so unsuccessful in getting money off their customers.