Agreed. Not sure why people are downvoting you. It blows my mind every time I think, "I wonder how <some program> works?" and I'm able to just "apt-get source some_program" and check it out.
Working with Linux and having the source (and the ability to change it) for entire stack all the way down to and including the kernel is liberating. As a programmer it feels like the entire world is open to me.
I guess that's GNU's dream brought to life, really.
We currently have a decentralized mess of competing products. Many of them overlap and do similar things, but they all feed off of each other to improve. It is this competitive environment that improves the products and libraries we use. Anybody can identify a flaw in an existing system and build something to address it.
What this article proposes is a monolithic culture, where everything is centralized and controlled by a few entities. We tried this in the IBM/Microsoft days and it doesn't work. We end up with a single poorly documented tool that offers limited functionality.
The world of programming is more accessible today than ever before. If you are a novice, there are tools for you. If you are an expert, there are tools for you. If you are transitioning from novice to expert, there are tools for you!
