The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Will Ware]

Ed (elb at cfdrc.com) wrote:
> ... I didn't think much of the article...
> ...they gave the impression that programmers behave
> somewhat like monkeys, motivated primarily by concerns
> about group status and dominance...

They also mentioned, but immediately belittled, the possibility
that altruism might be a real motivation. They may have been
projecting their own thinking upon programmers in doing so. I'm
not an open source purist, but I can easily see that a future world
with a lot of free software will be a lot more pleasant for me to
live in than one from which free software is absent. Benefits to
the rest of society and to myself are not in conflict here. Maybe
that's not really altruism, maybe it's just long-term thinking, a
motivation they didn't mention at all.
-- 
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Resistance is futile. Capacitance is efficacious.
Will Ware	email:    wware @ world.std.com