The first will be at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society’s lunch series. I’ve been hanging out at the Berkman Center off and on this year, and I’m eager to hear from the smart people who hang out there. June 17, noon-thirty.

The other will be as part of the MIT Press Bookstore’s Authors@MIT series. I’m especially proud of this one because once upon a time I worked at the MIT Press bookstore, and often helped organize exactly this kind of event. It’s like coming home… I often say that I would never have gotten to this point without that job; i’ve never felt so tuned in to the state of scholarship as when I spent 20hrs a week thinking about new books… I doubt I will ever be as hip as I was working there… June 24th 5:30pm

A small but very enthusiastic crowd received the talk very well, with great questions. One thing the book doesn’t address upfront, but which is perpetually the most obvious question is the so-called “motivation” question. That is, why do people do all this work creating free software (or free anything) and then give it away. In some ways, this question is central to the success of free software itself, in the form it’s taken as a result of Raymond’s formulation of it as a “gift economy” and so forth… an issue I attacked with gusto very early on, but never returned to (c.f. “Hau to do things with words“).

However, I think the book actually answers this question strongly, if not as straightforwardly as it could: the reason people contribute to free software is in fact because it makes things public. It is the relative certainty that contributors have–based on the license terms and the existing community–that is the minimum necessary “motivation” for contribution. I think the question is asked backwards if one asks “what motivates X to do Y?” rather than asking what motivates X to give away Y after it’s done?” In the absence of the license and the community, contributions to free software would diminish absolutely, even if the creation of software and other materials continued for differenet reasons.

Of course, this doens’t explain why millions of people contribute reviews to Amazon, or give away ideas and intellectual property to corporations… but the question is still the same I think: not why do people write reviews for amazon, but what motivates them to give up their property in order to see it there.