Opensource, seems to be now defining how the overall professional programming develops, and how overall computing technology develops. It is a very powerful ph

Opensource, seems to be now defining how the overall professional programming develops, and how overall computing technology develops. It is a very powerful phenomena that, may be more akin to development of a writing system(s). There is simply no way to stop it, or reduce it to a 'island' of some sort. So active creators of OSS value, definitely need to keep in mind how wide and long term the influence of their decisions might be. As the societies will continue to use their constructs not just in software but in other areas as well, for a long time. --- Just the other day, I was thinking how many programmers are there in the world (and i my definition -- these are people who had written software for 2+ years, and were paid for it). Older estimates (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3555251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3555251 ) are off. I think the number is closer to 50-70 mln. But I also caught myself thinking, that programming in some scripting language to perform some task that by itself is not creating a new program -- is really a modern type of literacy (such as reading, writing, math).