Gunnar Hellekson was good enough to help me along the path with this response on commoditization, one of my favorite words. The grounding idea for me is "undifferentiated good". Undifferentiated (another good word) is a biological concept that means "having no special structure or function." How better to bring me out of the spin I was in and back to the path at hand?

A funny thing happened at Mil-OSS LANT, I disagreed with Gunnar Hellekson! Let me be clear. Gunnar and I see eye to eye, so I feel the need to work it out in print. As usual, Gunnar put forth a very cogent and highly articulate presentation about removing complexity from software design using better design choices, fixing specialization in IT to something saner, oh and open source software. As referenced on page 18 of the presentation, "Craftsmanship is the enemy": shout it from the rooftops. Stop building better engines and start building cars, so consumers can consume not construct. If welders can weld anything, why can't system admins admin any system?