If he said, "It is not productive <i>for me</i>  to spend an hour learning how to change the font on my computer’s clock." he would be right.<p>He makes these sweeping generalizations about what is or is not productive <i>for other people</i> to do. By his definition all the people "tinkering with"  open source  Linux, Apache, etc would be "non productive" since perfectly good commercial alternatives existed (and still exist) for them.