-------- Original Message --------

> Absolutely agree. I'd argue that what I'd like to see - a kind of
> "guild" for IT workers, regulating both skills/experience and
> remuneration/working conditions - could potentially raise both the
> general quality of the code, and the status of the programmers

You might be surprised how many of the safest programmers and most secure IT
workers wouldn't be able to afford this guild.

Case in point. Universities were (are?) basically a marketing tool for Cisco. If
you need backbone performance then Cisco is/was perhaps a good choice otherwise
OpenBSD has beaten them on the security front for years.

-- 
All the best,
             Kevin Chadwick