[coward8675309]

Here's a thought: Open source project contributions can function as a Veblen good. Made to display or assert status and to communicate that you produce intellectual property in such bulk that you can afford to give it away.

Surely open source contributions occur for many reasons but I'm inclined that the above is an important one.

[gumby]

I suppose they can function as such but I doubt it's a particularly common case. Here are a couple of alternative models:

1 - I have no vehicle for monetising my output so I will use it as advertising, maybe just to my friends. Quite a number of people built a reputation this way (while earning a living some other way). This is how Justin Bieber became famous too.

2 - I need this feature / bug fix in some program I use so if I can get it into the main project I will then continue to be able to use it as that program is updated without having to keep patching it in myself. In this case the open source approach makes your own efforts cheaper in the long run.

3 - I want to move a market and by removing a barrier to adoption (cost) I can "flood the zone" and crowd out other approaches. This has worked for various infrastructure (first gcc (and then lvm); most notably Linux, etc), and is now used as an offensive weapon to build moats and scorched earth defenses around large companies.

Plus of course the simple "I wanted this and it would be fun if others did too" for something that's simply not big enough to be a fully sustaining product. Or the sheer fun of collective activity, which really is no different from playing on an amateur soccer team. Playing soccer with your friends on the week end isn't really ostentatiously demonstrating that you have some leisure time, and Vleben didn't claim it was, even when we are all aware that there are others struggling so much that they have no leisure time at all.

[dredmorbius]

All valid motivations. Possible others:

4 - Keeping in practice / learning skills requires constant exercise. Programming problems represent one form of this. Where collaboration itself is a trainable / maintainable skill, public group effort is directly relevant.

5 - Where skill asssessment is difficult, public work product and process function as a shingle and credential.

6 - Collaboration builds and strengthens professional ties and bonds.

[kristianp]

Citation on Chet Ramsey please . It's quite a common name on Google.

[dredmorbius]

Meant to reply here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25315653

[carapace]

Well, yeah. RMS equaled the output of a team of ~12 other programmers. But those kind of folks don't need status, they are their own status. E.g. I doubt Fabrice Bellard does what he does from any concern for status. It's just what he do.

- - - -

No single entity can afford to pay elite programmers like RMS and Bellard anything like what their work is actually worth. No one even tries. The rational thing to do (IMO) is give your work away freely and then ride the general prosperity that results.

For (another) example, who could pay Chet Ramsey anything comparable to what his work is actually worth? No one. Most of us reading this here use the software he maintains, every day, without thinking about him (or in many cases even knowing his name.) Rather than e.g. charging a micro-cent for each tab completion or something (which we could set up if we wanted to) he donates his work and, as compensation, gets to partake in the global "rising tide" that "lifts all boats". It's indirect but efficient. He can't be said to be working for status if hardly anyone knows his name, though, eh?

[Kinrany]

Some people can afford to give away all of their output, so that's not a good signal.

[WJW]

Wouldn't that make it a very good signal for "conspicuous consumption" purposes?

"I don't need to charge money at all for the software I produce" definitely seems like a Veblen-worthy signal to me, since it implies that the statement-maker is already rich.