“Ten years ago, I remember ruminating over the open source movement and wondering what its limits were. What kind of stuff would people do for free, and what kind of stuff wouldn’t they? Since open source software is mostly produced by obsessive nerds, the obvious answer is that they’ll work for free on the kind of things that obsessive nerds themselves like to use: operating systems, editors, compilers, etc. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you have, say, the firmware for controlling GM’s assembly line robots. Nobody in their right mind would do that for free.
But where’s the line? The interesting answer is: if it’s the kind of thing that one person (or a small set of people) can do, then it’s wherever one competent person draws it. I’d guess that very few people feel that classified advertising (!) is so important to a vibrant society that they want to dedicate their lives to making it available for free, but it turned out that it didn’t take very many people. Just one guy named Craig.”
