John Dvorak on Open Source Motivations
JohnDvorak is guest blogging over at BoingBoing. He points out this comment which was in response to his article about the whole SCO vs. Linux shebang.
"OpenSource software is an important effort to replace 'for-profit' motives (with it's material rewards) with 'for-ego' motives (with it's emotional and psychological rewards). It's a restatement of capitalism's thesis ('private vice begets public virtue') for an industry in which the participants feel the immaterial rewards for one's self (prestige) are equivalent to, or greater than, the possible material rewards for one's self (money).
"Vanity is the driving force behind OpenSource software, as is greed behind closed-source software. Try to use someone's OSS code without attributing original authorship, and you will see how quickly your quaint "community" devolves into harsh campaigns of public remonstration towards the violator. It is of primary importance that original authorship always be identified.
"This is _not_ the hallmark of a communal environment; it is indicative of an environment in which everything is okay as long as people get credit for what they have contributed to a project. In other words, people in this community are not driven by altruism over greed, but by fame over obscurity."
Now, given this ... is FreeSoftware different from OpenSource?
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