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I just returned from a visit to my parents with my family.  My siblings and I are in kid-mode right now, with 7 cousins between ages 1 and 9, so we had some DVDs playing periodically as the cousins wore each other out.  One of the movies was Ratatouille.  The theme of that movie is near and dear to my heart because it shares the same grassroots, bootstrapping quality as the craftsmanship model and the way that apprentices are found and developed.  The movie is all about cooking and the theme is "Anyone can cook".

I believe that the Internet and Open Source have made this true for software developers.  Anyone with an Internet connection can learn some basic skills.  That's how I got my start, by reading an HTML tutorial online.  Just like most people have food and some tools for preparing it, many people have access to all the information they need to become a novice programmer.

A food critic at the end of the movie built on top of the "Anyone can cook" theme with "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."  This quote hit home, particularly after giving my OSCON talk last week, which was fairly heavy-handed about Obtiva's success with people lacking a computer science education.