The point, as I see it, is that open source is a possible starting point in the journey of software development.

No one's obligated to use open source. You are welcome to write your own stuff from scratch if you want. For me, however, open source is a heck of a good place to start, and I accept the reality that something I get from CPAN may not be complete, or bug-free, with the knowledge that I can make a difference by helping improve the module I'm using.

And that's an important difference. I can make a change to Template::Toolkit if I want, for example. If I find a bug, contact the authour/maintainers, talk with the folks in the community, offer the patch, how can that not benefit everyone? I get something that works 1% better. So does the community.

As everyone donates their 1%, we get a better and better product, and build a stronger and stronger community. Many eyeballs make for shallow bugs, and all that.

Instead of fellow monk powerman ranting about how poorly the Mail::* modules fare in following the various RFCs and in security and reliability, I believe s/he should concentrate their energies on making it right.