> Then why is it that millions of FOSS developers, despite knowing that their work may be consumed by for-profit corporations for nothing in return Well, that

> Then why is it that millions of FOSS developers, despite knowing that their work may be consumed by for-profit corporations for nothing in return Well, that in itself is already some kind of return. Widespread use - even in a commercial setting - means widespread interest in your work and possibly in you. That might not directly translate into $$$ in the bank, but it is quite useful psychologically, technologically (think: issue reports and triage, testing of new functionality, input on future design) and even financially, in a roundabout way. Still, the main reason - for many of us anyway - is that we wrote, and write, based on _need_: We needed the software, or our friends/coworkers needed it, or maybe we perceived a public need; we wanted to satisfy this need, and there you have it. ---- Nitpick: > A world without Wikipedia. Wikipedia could have functioned just fine on some commercial equivalent of a Wiki. Wikipedia editing does not involve working on MediaWiki source code. So, not a good example IMHO.