Leaderboard

Try Savage II

I recommend "The Pathfinder" by Nicholas Lore for big life and career decisions. Very very helpful.

I fully agree with your statement idanwin, thanks for sharing it that way. We are moving toward an open-source economy, event though there will always still be some closed areas too. I am very positive about where we're heading. The news on radio, TV and papers, on my opinion, don't reflect how much we are evolving toward cooperation and collaborative networking in all areas of society. Linux is just one part of this all. There's much more. I suggest you watch the work of Open Source Ecology, an awesome DIY and OS farming community in Missouri. About your homework : I know, it's tough. I kind of hated school and homework. But I've learned that if you want to achieve something you don't want to do, you need to find a way to love it. I mean, change your point of view on the work you don't want to do. See what kind of unexpected connection this work or matter can have with what you love. When you make that connection, you start to find a meaning in this work / matter. If you're passionate by open source, see how the work you've got to do can contribute somehow to make you a better open-source hero ! Maybe it's simply going to make you a harder worker able to greatly pass the difficulties. I also learned that we often spend more time thinking and worrying about a task than the time we will actually need to do it! So, sometimes it's good to shut the mind up and do the darn work, and discover that it doesn't take long to complete, and it leaves you satisfied, free and available again, now the job is done. Anyway, bonne chance !

I would recommend Yochai Benkler's lectures/book for some discussion of people's motivations in contributing to free, open source software projects, and related projects such as wikipedia. Definitely the traditional models only partially explain why people do what they do, but at the same time it's probably not reasonable to expect self interest to disappear entirely.