More open source contributions from bureaucracies, please

Our own Big Money Matt notes today that a trickle of open source contributions from Google has lately become a flood.

He’s very happy about that. I am too.

Serial entrepreneur Jeff Bussgang, writing for Business Week, speculates that a desire for recognition may spur many contributions, and that’s a good motivator.  

Fact is, however, the question of motivation for contributing to open source has never been systematically explored, and that’s a shame.

With more-and-more organizations using open source, exploring motivation becomes more important. It could help us tease out more contributions, benefitting everyone.

The most common theories for contributions, in addition to pride, are altruism and greed. Either people are selfless, or they know their contributions can build a good business, such as the one that Matt works at.

The problem with these motives is they are, on the whole, individual. Most people live in bureaucracies. People inside bureaucracies, bound by a bureaucracy’s rules, may be unable to act on individual motivations.

(The late, great Douglas Adams wrote the original script for the 1987 game Bureaucracy, whose cover art is above. Sad to think that if he were my age he’d have been dead for four years.)

Whether bureaucracies are public or private, however, they are still composed of people, people motivated to expand their reach and power.

So how does open source harness that? What might move a bureaucracy to open its vaults and let its open source work roam free?