It's the labor theory of value in action. "We put in the labor, labor is intrinsically worth something, because we're giving you something that's worth somethin

It's the labor theory of value in action. "We put in the labor, labor is intrinsically worth something, because we're giving you something that's worth something, it should be appreciated by you and by the wider community." But that only works when you're in the programming equivalent of a 20 member socialist commune. It doesn't work at scale, and the Linux kernel is the effing king of large open-source projects. At scale, you must have standards to ensure the value added is higher than the cost of maintenance. Who's going to set the standards if not the kernel maintainers? The contributors? That's anarchy, leading to collapse. The wider community, in some democratic fashion? Easiest way to kill momentum and thus kill the project.