Freetards = Greedtards

by on March 7, 2008 · 2 comments

Via the always carefully inoffensive ValleyWag, Psychology Today has a post about a study of the motivations of open source programmers and other participants in collaborative online projects. The study finds that “software contributors placed a greater emphasis on reputation-gaining and self-development motivations, compared with content contributors, who placed a greater emphasis on altruistic motives.”

We’ve discussed here before how open source projects often represent a more efficient way of producing information goods than firms. Some are eager to class open source as “non-market” (read altruistic) behavior, but I think it’s better considered as market behavior that happens to trade in human capital, reputation, self-satisfaction, etc. rather than money.

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About Jim Harper

Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. He avoids genuine life experience by watching lots and lots of reality TV.

Read more articles by Jim Harper.

  • http://www2.blogger.com/profile/14380731108416527657 Steve R.

    Good post. There are actually quite a number of altruistic websites that “prove” we are not all motivated solely by greed. It’s unfortunate that I have not seen greater references on the TLF to these types of websites.

    Personally, I have obtained significant help from World Access Forums. The members of the forum have provided, for free, a lot of valuable advice.

    In fact, from a pro-business perspective I am somewhat surprised that more companies don’t provide user forums. True it may cost money to establish, but it lets the users help each other and the company won’t need an expensive call center to answer questions that the customer may have. Additionally, user forums (as a shared community) would promote customer loyalty and product involvement. Nothing more irritating than waiting an hour or so on hold in order to talk to a customer representative.

  • http://www2.blogger.com/profile/14380731108416527657 Steve R.

    Good post. There are actually quite a number of altruistic websites that “prove” we are not all motivated solely by greed. It’s unfortunate that I have not seen greater references on the TLF to these types of websites.

    Personally, I have obtained significant help from World Access Forums. The members of the forum have provided, for free, a lot of valuable advice.

    In fact, from a pro-business perspective I am somewhat surprised that more companies don’t provide user forums. True it may cost money to establish, but it lets the users help each other and the company won’t need an expensive call center to answer questions that the customer may have. Additionally, user forums (as a shared community) would promote customer loyalty and product involvement. Nothing more irritating than waiting an hour or so on hold in order to talk to a customer representative.

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