@Barry - The "free"dom comment wasn't directed to you. It harkens back to the big debate we all had several months ago about GPL themes.... Especially the big debate we had at WordCamp MidAtlantic... yeah, you know who you are. :) (Though it was a very spirited debate, it was tons of fun... but the quantity of beers probably contributed.)

Now it would be easy enough to not have Akismet show up on the website, but but have it update through the control panel. That would be a simple issue.