The problem is compiled languages. With interpreted languages like FORTH or shell, licensing is rendered a moot point, because you can always read the source code anyway. There needs to be a concerted effort based around a truly simple, non-object oriented, Assembly-based implementation of FORTH, with diffs made available for each platform as required.

Each time I suggest how to proceed he reviews with the Junior dev whose input is often irrelevant because he doesn't understand what I am talking about.

This is the one thing here that stuck out to me. I'm not a programmer because I refuse to write in languages which I think should not rightfully exist (read: OOP in general, basically) for a living, but I have done tech support. If I make suggestions, and the person I am trying to help not only second guesses me, but does so with someone who I know has less knowledge, experience, competence, or basic intelligence than I do, I will generally leave very quickly, because it is futile and won't do anything other than causing me stress. If the person I'm trying to help respects someone who is incompetent more than they do me, then they can rely on said incompetent to help them.

I do have around seven years' informal experience with FOSS UNIX, (mostly Linux, but some time with the BSDs) and the one programming gig I ever had was related to shell scripting. I ultimately screwed that up, because at the time I wasn't anywhere near as good a scripter as I am now, so I made promises I ultimately couldn't keep, because I thought I was going to be able to learn as I went. That did not work.

Not necessarily purely FP. Pretty much anything but OOP.

I can express the idea here, that there is a malevolent corporate conspiracy behind this, without immediately being viewed as schizophrenic. That's one of the things I appreciate about Voat.

In my observation, the single biggest problem with the programming industry, is the coercive dominance of object oriented programming as a paradigm, and the desire which many OOP programmers seem to have, to ensure that OOP is the only form that anyone ever uses or learns. I view OOP as a maladaptive, tyrannical perversion that makes everything associated with programming more complex and difficult than it needs to be.

If mobile phone interfaces have taught me anything, it is that the technology industry views its' customers as the enemy, and it does not want users to have understanding or control of the systems they use, because if users had said control or understanding, they might be able to use their systems in ways which were more conducive to their real needs, and less compatible with the rules of Capitalism. OOP is the perfect coding paradigm for an industry that wants programming to be elitist, and for the majority to be locked out.

Programming has had the same measures taken against it as agriculture. Operating systems being neither open source or having development environments by default, are directly analogous with Monsanto's introduction of Terminator seeds, which do not allow plants to reproduce after the first generation. This has also been done for the same reasons. Money is made via scarcity and monopoly, not via the presence of abundance.

Free only really went bad when they removed sysinstall, and replaced ports with a JSON-infested nightmare. Jordan Hubbard got employed by Apple a while back, and from memory he was pretty much the leader of the project. I don't know who's running things now, but if this is any indication, there are definite problems.