When Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985, he was able to tap into the energy of many programmers around the world who wanted to work on a free operating system. Later, in the...

When Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985, he was able to tap into the energy of many programmers around the world who wanted to work on a free operating system. Later, in the early 1990s, Linux Torvalds was also able to fi nd programmers to help him, in this case, to develop the Linux kernel. Why are so many programmers willing to work a long time on a diffi cult project and then give away the fruits of their labor for free? Is this more common with young programmers than old programmers? If so, why?