Personally, I think that everyone should have some form of programming chops. If only so people can program in the features that they want/need into the softwar

Personally, I think that everyone should have some form of programming chops. If only so people can program in the features that they want/need into the software they use. That's why I think programmers as users (that can contribute back!) are so beneficial. Heck, they can even help the lead programmer debug by finding stack traces, culprit lines in code, working on things the author can't make time for, etc. etc. You're right in that it's "potential" power, but I think it's just a matter of time of getting more people into the open-source and contributing mindset. I don't think enough of my coworkers or previous peers from uni respect the power of open-source. They just see open-source software as something... 'fixed'. It's either good, or not. They don't realize that they can easily change it with some determination. On a sidenote, have you read about the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" [1], by Eric S. Raymond? I thought it was quite an eye-opener on the merits of open-source vs the closed-source alternative. [1] http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1472/1387 http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt...