It has helped establish U.S. economic, technological, and political dominance in a fractious and dangerous world. It's vital that computer knowledge remains an open public possession, but that's not what's happening. Right now, for-profit computer firms are falling all over themselves trying to patent even the silliest snippets of code, and an unbelievably myopic U.S. Patent Office is giving away the store. Consider the USS Norfolk lying dead in the water for two hours after the failure of its onboard NT systems, and you'll get the idea. The Open Source movement won't wipe out commercial software, any more than it will create an important and valuable alternative.
Computer software is too important to leave to for-profit corporations.
There needs to be a balance between publicly accessible knowledge and proprietary, for-profit knowledge, and the Open Source movement is lighting the way. Without computer literacy, they don't stand a chance in today's global economy. Call it communism, if you like. I call it progress. Bryan Pfaffenberger is a University of Virginia professor and author.