FWIW, I find this to be incredibly useful when the machines become salient and might otherwise try to eradicate the human race.

Cheers.

Vendors who contribute heavily to open source projects do so in large part because their products are used with open source software. To use IBM as an example, some portion of every dollar spent on IBM hardware goes towards furthering open source development. The ultimate corporate consumers do therefore contribute, albeit not directly. Whether or not they should be making more direct or more substantive contributions may still be up for debate, but it seems clear - to me at least - that IBM's model would not exist if these companies were not using Linux.

For gas and electricity, I pay PSE&G in New Jersey a distribution charge on top of what they charge for the actual gas/elec consumption.

I couldn't agree with your statements more. Our introductory computer science course (a "primer" for non-majors) spends the first third of the class learning how to use Linux. In my opinion, this is the dumbest use of class time possible. There is absolutely no value in knowing the Linux prompt; all this section of the course does is show students how to use the command prompt to traverse the familiar filesystem abstractions instead of a GUI.

This Linux ramp-up literally serves the sole purpose of getting students ready to use gcc when they learn C++ in the next third. Intro students would be better served by learning more about what it means to write a program. Frankly, I would be more than happy to have intro students learn VBA to script Microsoft Office.

The point is that intro students should learn why computer science is useful, and how computers can be put to good use in general. I know too many people who spend hours doing repetitive tasks that I could solve in 10 minutes with a short script. Intro classes should show students, at the very least, when asking a computer professional for advice can save them lots of time.