Ever notice how people are devalued in general? Whenever I've played the working-class restaurant help or fastfood worker, I'm treated as interchangeable, like commodity hardware. When I play the mystical AI programmer, bosses ask forgiveness if a task is beneath me.
Of course, this is the opposite of a sane society. People should be flabbergasted that a human is reduced to "burger flipper"; and maybe curl their lips at the aristocratic boy playing with computers, who sometimes automates people away.
(Maybe this is why some feel a bit of schadenfreude in techies being offshored, something which I hear devalues techies far more than Free Software. We don't erect cartels like some other professions.)
But I agree with some people here: everyone should know a little bit about how the sausage is made.
For example, do people know that when you use Google, you're really executing instructions on a Linux computer? Most of us here are Linux users, maybe all of us.
That horrible Unix command line is just a program (a poorly conceived one). Google is a program too.
It's true that there are many (to be polite) misleading evangelists who paint a false front. So when the poor misinformed newbie gets angry and shouts at a forum that "This shit doesn't work!" a bunch of equally furious techies flames the fellow into oblivion for being a jerk.
Honesty is vital, I find. When I recommend software, I first ask what their situation is. If a piece of Free Software happens to be hard to use (as is fairly often the case), I mention that as a cost. But I also mention corporate lock-in under costs. It only takes a couple sentences. Eventually, they may be curious about this Free Software dealie, just as someone might be curious about what you had for breakfast, and I can offer them an interesting couple minutes.
Tayssir