Icommons.org

Applying open source collaboration models to other creative endeavours

OK Folks,

Schmatler and Waldhead are back again with some more words of wisdom on why we think people contribute to open source software projects and whether we can take lessons from this and apply it to other forms of creativity. In case you missed our introduction you can check it out here.

Now, why, you might ask, are we spending our valuable time writing about why people freely give away the fruits of their hard work, and then give away the fruits of our hard work to - you? One of the main reasons is that we dig it - it’s fun to sit down, debate, discuss, disagree, and go through the whole process of producing these articles. It’s not really work - it’s more like a hobby for us.

And that’s exactly what writing software feels like for many of the geeks who share their code in open source software projects. In fact, Waldhead is one of them, and he will sit in front of that machine for hours and hours on a beautiful late summer Sunday evening like yesterday (just a hypothetical example, of course), simply because he enjoys it so much. The pay-off for him lies in the process itself, not in the compensation he receives for the result of his work - in this case the
software he is working on. (more…)