Re: And so it continues...

Buck wrote:

I disagree that

OSS is at fault. I've learnt much more programming and a boatload more about infrastructure by using OSS than I ever did by using proprietary wizard-driven software from IBM, Microsoft or Lotus.

I would go so far as to say that not only is Open Source NOT part of the problem; indeed, it is part of the solution.

A little over a quarter century ago, I wrote a paper in my high school term paper class, which evolved into a revised version in my freshman term paper class at CSU Long Beach, addressing computer literacy as a force for good. Back then, desktop computers always came bundled with at least minimal development tools (usually a BASIC editor-interpreter), computer classes in high school were almost always programming classes, and at least elementary programming skills were implicit in the very concept of computer literacy.

The Open Source movement is one that, like HTML and scripting languages, brings end-users back in the general direction of that late-1970s-early-1980s ideal of what computer literacy is all about. Thanks to the ubiquity of canned software, much of which either has no facility for customization, and much of which actively resists customization, none of us are likely to live to see a society where everybody is truly computer literate, and can easily change behaviors they don't like, but Open Source is a step in the right direction.