1. An Introductory Contradiction
Anyone who watches the busy, tremendously productive world of Internet
open-source software for a while is bound to notice an interesting
contradiction between what open-source hackers say they believe and
the way they actually behave -- between the official ideology of the
open-source culture and its actual practice.
Cultures are adaptive machines. The open-source culture is a
response to an identifiable set of drives and pressures. As usual,
the culture's adaptation to its circumstances manifests both as
conscious ideology and as implicit, unconscious or semi-conscious
knowledge. And, as is not uncommon, the unconscious adaptations are
partly at odds with the conscious ideology.
In this paper, we will dig around the roots of that contradiction, and
use it to discover those drives and pressures. We will deduce some
interesting things about the hacker culture and its customs. We will
conclude by suggesting ways in which the culture's implicit knowledge
can be leveraged better.