Scriptability: To what degree is this critical?

["Dan Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

Here I am, in the middle of pounding out Yet Another GNOME post(yes my
volume has gone down, I have a life too :-) when lo and behold, a real
question hits me.

Scriptability.

The GIMP exposes almost(?) all of its functions to other programs.  This
singlehandedly convinced me that I needed to upgrade to Linux, for the GIMP.
In fact, if it wasn't for this I'd have never become interested enough in
any of this stuff to join GNOME GUI.

The powers of scriptability have been used for good--Net::Fu, for example.
But malicious apps exist, and scriptability grants powers like giving
Microsoft Word the power to post your document to alt.sex.stories.  But,
regardless, the number one complaint of NT coders is the lack of a powerful
scripting environment--well, besides having to reboot if the ethernet card
looks at you funny.

Both sides being considered, to what degree should we encourage programmers
to allow scripting access to their apps?  I'm aware CORBA is being used for
GUI issues, but what about Corba-To-The-Core?