Getting to the root of FOSS

This article describes thoughts and studies by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, who concludes that altruism may not be the primary thing that drives the production of Free Software and that it may actually be good old self interest even though exchange of values isn't always a direct one.

"In "Cooking pot markets", Ghosh made the point that these transactions need not be one-to-one. "It doesn't really matter whether you get something back specifically for what you've given as long as you think that you're getting something out of the system that's more than what you put in," he says. The 2002 study and subsequent work have showed clearly that this is how open-source developers feel about their contributions. Despite a diversity of motives – fun, learning new skills, earning money (though the income may be indirect) – the responses "clearly show that the benefits people derive outweigh what they feel is the cost of what they contribute. "In fact," he adds, "most of the leading open-source developers are making money for their contributions." Typically, 20 percent of developers write more than 75 percent of the code, though they still need the other's contribution in order to finish projects." -- Read the article