[solididiot]

Couldn't agree more. I was working in a company that didn't allow local checkouts. You'd have to work in a remote VM. Next step was going to fully remote desktops (i.e. dumb terminals). For security reasons (whatever). I hated every moment of it as it made feedback times longer and for doing anything at all you needed to beg the IT people. But the weirdest part is that other devs didn't seem to mind. (Not to mention all the spyware crap installed on our machines and the whole mentality of security over productivity. All of it -security- sold to us by third parties as a service (nvm how absurd it is to trust N other companies to keep you secure). Anyhow this place was surreal but I'm afraid it's not the only one).

So to answer the question of how we came here: The same way anything in the commons sphere rots and dies. Not enough people care enough about it. They're OK giving away control one way or another and companies are more than happy to sell it as a service. What user gets in return is diminishing but once the process starts it's kind of runaway I'm afraid.