> Wake me up when we start writing software where the beneficiary is the end user. Too true. And a lot of the chatter I hear about benefiting the user seems l

> Wake me up when we start writing software where the beneficiary is the end user. Too true. And a lot of the chatter I hear about benefiting the user seems like regurgitated marketing copy and euphemism, with AFAICT no awareness of what really developing for the user would be like. > Do you want to attract young people to open source again? Start actually building software where the story behind why open source matters is actually true again. Yes, and I have a guess of where the potential likely is (with a little background)... I wonder whether this is actually harder to appeal to the amenable people than it used to be, because they're surrounded by ubiquitous conflicting messages -- about what computers, software, development, collaboration, design (UX for engagement and manipulation), charity (it's for college applications), etc. are about. And when even the basic tools with which you can build new things are getting twisted, with anti-social intent implicit in their design. Remember when programmers were nerds -- in the sense of some degree of social outcast, and when looking at the equivalent of a smartphone in public risked getting you physically beaten up, and certainly ridiculed? Not the "nerd" that currently means having the latest gadgets for posturing on social media, and being on track for a big-money career that upper-middle families launch their kids into, and which is blessed as fashionable by the cool kids at school? Maybe the next contributors in the earlier spirit still have to come from people who have an outside perspective, and now who are also strong-minded enough to cut through the deafening noise of commercial greed messages.