You raise some excellent points in your response, on every point besides 2 and 6 we are generally in agreement. 6 is outside of my experience, and so I don't have a meaningful opinion. 2 is one of the things I like about Esperanto, though you might well be right. I intend to study Mandarin, and since you mentioned it perhaps that will change my opinion regarding #2.

I did say that Esperanto isn't perfect, truly it is itself flawed. Even besides the points you made, even in the foundation there are irregularities which exist which are scarcely justifiable:

• words which are redundant
• some root words which are simply difficult to pronounce for anyone
• the difficulties that arise from certain combinations of word parts
• constructed words which work one way in a certain set of cases, a different way in another
• the confusing resemblance to unrelated word constructions which some root words have

...to name but the things that come to mind.

And certainly if we're going by head-count there is little reason to learn Esperanto instead of a natural language. But there is more to a language then just the number of people who speak it, there is also the question of who your going to be talking to and why. In that analysis depending on the particulars, almost any language can be about equal, even a "toy" language like Esperanto.

But it must not be forgotten what the original subject is: the question of the future of software development. Arguing in favor of any national language is like arguing for the domination of a national system of measurement, instead of metric. Certainly you probably are right that the euro-centricity of Esperanto makes it ill suited as a international language at it's very core, and in this you and I would be in agreement, but so too in that way no national language should enter into the equation.