> Why don't we choose to use our rare skills for our own profit (as everyone else does), and instead many of us give away immense value (and power/leverage) by

> Why don't we choose to use our rare skills for our own profit (as everyone else does), and instead many of us give away immense value (and power/leverage) by open sourcing our work? This is an interesting question, but effectively not only do these things work as a force multiplier for the whole industry, but those that give it away often find themselves gaining leverage and opportunity from it. This also assumes that Open Source is only produced by hobbyists and is given away by people in their spare time. In my experience that's not really true - a lot of the good stuff is developed by paid engineers, but the company that's paid them has decided to open source their work. Which is great!