Nathan, I think we both agree with what you wrote:
" The main advantage of FOSS is that since you have access to the code you have a fighting chance, and more importantly, the right, to modify that software. Meaning someone could have sat down and added that feature and allowed others to benefit from it."
It is the unrealized potential FOSS that is making me grumpy. While I think you were referring to AMSAT satellite software, I was of course talking about GNU Mailman list software. The Mailman software is widely known, and the current version 3 has been under development for years so you would think that all the thousands of "someones" out in the open source development world would have gotten the Mailman migration tools right, but so far they have not. I put my faith in the open source development methodology and it let me down.
I am simply arguing for realistic expectations of the open source development model. To open source everything AMSAT would be expensive in terms of management labor and most likely lawyers, so lets clearly understand the likelihood that motivated, capable technical experts who can follow through will in fact present themselves as a result. One can of course point to some spectacular open source successes, but it is a lot easier to find stuff half baked and forgotton.
Open source or not, we can do a better job at communicating with each other. I am not that good at it ... I have spent at least 2 hours trying to write this e-mail without accidentally offending anyone, and I am not sure I succeeded. What baby steps can we all take togehter to open up as much information as we can as soon as we can?
de KM1P Joe