Working Knowledge: The Organizational Model for Open Source

“Stark: Could you explain why the emergence of
nonprofit foundations in the hacker culture appears to be a
contradiction in terms?

“O’Mahony: The hacker culture prizes autonomy
and self-determination. Eric Raymond defines hackers as those who
love programming for the sake of doing it, for the sake of
obsessively solving a problem. Thus, hackers who contribute to the
open source community are often intrinsically motivated.

“It is important to realize, however, that hackers are a diverse
group. I have interviewed hobbyists, students, academics, software
professionals, and government workers who identify themselves as
hackers. It is not safe to generalize about all of the values that
hackers share, but they tend to agree on at least one thing:
Respect must be earned and cannot be derived from position…”

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