"But how do you serve craftsmanship without serving the market? How can an independent artisan insure that he doesn’t become an entrepreneur and, in time, a corporate executive?"

What's so bad about "serving the market"?

Many of us absolutely love writing great software. Almost as much as we love watching people use our software.

We are craftsmen, in every sense of the word. We have tools we love, some of which we built ourselves. We may not wash them with soap, but we do collect the garbage from time to time.

Ours is a labor of love, often done alone, and sometimes done only for ourselves. We call that "dogfood" and it's not the only way to be a craftsman. We get double joy when someone uses our products, and no, we don't have to sell out to the man in order to do that.

If Crawford better understood what some of us do with technology, he'd probably realize that many of us are already living his utopia and his outlook would improve. Who knows, maybe his next book will be about programmers quietly building the new order in a million garages around the world.