At the end of the day, what we have been experienting since the early 2000s is just the industrialisation of software development. 20 years ago it was still a craft and it has become a job. 20 years ago if you needed to do something serious with computers your best bet was to hire a self taught amateur who started working in the video game industry while still in highschool, had build his own 8bits computer and programmed his own operating system as a past-time.

That was not sustainable, the industry needs predictable employees. Even if that means many more of them. "Industrialization" of a process consists of nothing more than splitting that process into smaller, simpler tasks: Front end / back end / system ops / architecture, each split again by technologies, frameworks, languages, etc etc. Gone are the days where you could and needed to know everything.

The workforce increases massively, but since workers no longer need 10 years of intensive practice before being useful they are also cheaper, and most importantly, again : the whole process becomes predictable. You can replace a worker without jeopardizing your business.

The same process happened to many crafts during the industrial revolution, and that spawned similar culture wars between the old gard of craftsmen lamenting the poor quality of the industrial output. Maybe Stallman will be remembered as the Proudhon of our times?

Our times may be a bit more epic, because we were not only craftmen, we were building a new society, or so we though. Computers being machines of logic would help us become more rational, being accessible universal means of production they would blur the distinction between consumers and producers by making everyone a producer, and worldwide networks would turn our divided societies into a global village. Well, in just a few years the oposite happened: the machines locked consumers into walled gardens, greatly reinforced the power structure in place, and made us more divided than ever.

In 20 years from now, very few people will remember how free and powerful we have been.