"hacking the social system"

[Jesse Haubrich]

<snip>
> I believe that B. F. Skinner would strongly disagree with you.
<snip>

Skinner studied mice, not developers. I wonder how his results would
have varied had he been only able to acquire cats. ;-) Additionally,
any developer who is motivated by praise can contact me directly. I'm
willing to trade some heavy back patting for CPA work and household
chores. :-P

I don't know, maybe I'm socially maladjusted. Growing up, my sisters
always got praised for doing the *expected* thing. The most I ever got
was a red bottom; which is a small price to pay for fun. ;)

ESR has an article, "The Hacker Primer" where he relates developers
with the anthropological idea of a "gift culture."  A gift culture, as
he describes it, is society where status is gained based on how much a
person gives.  This is a strong argument for the reason that status is
something that people strive for and are motivated by (esp. here in
the states).

I dug up this article that I stumbled on a few weeks ago. Its a brief
comparison of the motivation of traditional volunteer work versus Open
Source.

http://merrillassociates.net/topic/2004/04