The problem with opensource

The largest roadblock preventing OSS from becoming ubiquitous is not in the philosophy (not at all, fantastic philosophy) but rather in the medium. Modern, decent programming languages are simply too complex for Joe Average, reducing the contribution base for OSS down to a minority of proficient coders and crippling one of opensource's main selling points. For OSS to achieve its ideal, we need to develop simpler, more intuitive, more accessible, yet equally powerful forms of coding, such that any reasonable person using a piece of software is not limited in their ability to patch or modify it in any significant way. This is, obviously, not possible with the current state of computer science. We must overthrow tradition and embrace the future. WE MUST RISE UP AND FIGHT FOR OUR IDEAL. VIVA LA REVOLUCION 4CHAN.

>>14
| Have you really written programs in your life?
Of course I have, don't patronise. I hack code on a regular basis.
| If you write in Cobol, it's your problem
What? No one writes in Cobol, you brought that particular crime against technology up.

From the rest of your post I'm guessing you write specialised programs for science applications, probably involving simulation if you're going to the trouble of parallel programming. Sounds fun tbh. But my point is that most everyday programs aren't like that.

| And FYI I don't give a fuck about what 6pack-joe wants on his "AOL-computar to surf the intarweb."
And that's exactly what >>1 was complaining about. The best hackers got to be so good because they only work on hard problems that they enjoy. GUIs are boring so only mediocre programmers do them. Conclusion? We need more shitty programmers to write our GUIs so we can get on with solving interesting problems.

>>15
I'm considering reviving the good old days of the Lisp Machines by writing a kernel for the x86 that consists of a Lisp interpreter and pretty much nothing else. It probabaly wouldn't be a good idea, but I won't know until I've tried and despaired at the monster I've created :-)

What YOU'RE talking about is a Commodore or a Speccy. Cooler than an XBox and almost as large.