@Dennis, thanks for the link. Great to read insider views of the industry.

 

For the record and since my posting is awaiting moderation on the link below, I'm pasting my posting here too.

 

 

"Hallo Richard, I like your bluntness and that finally someone had the guts to bring out the issues. I’ve brought these up on ocassions and would like to add this to your posting.

You missed out that most of the Open Source programmers are really entrepreneurs, nothing more. They seek to make a living/create business of existing platforms because it costs them nothing in terms on asset investments and time. Free Software, as I like to call Open Source, is the long term destruction of any hopes for developers in Africa to do something about creating more localised versions of platforms etc. It will never happen as long as those in developed countries continue to push agendas for free software and its uptake.

How well one knows unix commands and can write scripts to create a more stable OS enviroment makes no difference to the developer world. I hope there will be a time when the world economic climate will put the free-software industry out of business and African developers will see the urgency to self develop and keep away from dependencies.

In the meantime, we are stuck with entrepreneurs who cannot be labelled as programmers. We must differentiate the skills and the business. The skills rarely exist because most of the code is on a silver plate and thats the unfortunate reality.

A few words from a .Net part time hobbyist dev "