BusinessWeek: “The Myth of Open-Source”:

Q: Why is it a myth that a startup will get developers to hone the product for free?

A: Think for a second, who works for free? I think it gets perpetrated because it’s such a nice myth — you would get love and peace, the old hippie dream you know? And it’s mostly true, but across all of software, not just open-source, you have a pyramid of productivity. It’s an art still — a black art of creating great software.

At top of the pyramid, you have these top 2% of developers that are 10 times — in some cases 100 times — more productive than the rest. It’s true in proprietary developments like Microsoft and true of open-source too. The value is the QA [quality-assurance testing to make sure the software works and finding and fixing bugs]. They cover more ground than we could ever test.

Putting aside the QA, there are 20 people who write the kernel, and guess what? These guys are all professionals. If you get free, you want a lot of it. If you give free, you’re going to give until you’re tired of giving, and that’s exactly what happens in the open-source community.