An anthropologist's view of an open source community (Opensource.com)

Opensource.com reports on a talk by anthropologist Diana Harrelson at FUDCon [Fedora Users and Developers Conference], which was held at the end of January in Tempe, Arizona. The talk focused on Harrelson's study on the Fedora community. "'My entire research was just to find out why you guys do it,' Diana said in her talk. Motivation may seem more obvious to those within communities, but from the outside, it looks more like doing a lot of hard work for no pay. [...] High on the list of reasons were learning for the joy of learning and collaborating with interesting and smart people. Motivations for personal gain, like networking or career benefits, were low on the list. Self motivation, however, is important, as seen in comments from multiple contributors who said things like, 'Mainly I contribute just to make it work for me.'"

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