I paritally agree with the bottom line, but completely disagree with the author's business-and-market-focused outlook. Universities have existed across social

I paritally agree with the bottom line, but completely disagree with the author's business-and-market-focused outlook. Universities have existed across social eras and political regimes. They should not be catering to the contemporary commercial interests of powerful market forces. They should teach principles, and basic skills, and deeper fundamental knowledge - with concrete programs or programming projects buttressing this goal rather than being the end-all in themselves. However, collective and collaborative work on a joint project, in particular a software project, intersects that sphere to some extent - so there's a place for it in a curriculum and as a means of practice. IMHO, however, student involvement in FOSS projects should be voluntary rather than mandated by such a course. It will also help those students who go on to work as professional programmers, but even for the researchers - help to counterpose what they have learned in theory with how you get things to work in practice. Moreover, and no less importantly: FOSS projects need developer time. So students should contribute to them because they need contributions (and - they're benefiting the public typically more than non-FOSS projects, so better to contribute to the former rather than the latter).