I often think that one of the most rewarding aspects of my career has been to take part in the rise of open source. Made possible by the internet's reach, it is driven primarily by the human desire to create and collaborate. Certainly there is an element of ego gratification, and possible monetary benefit in rare circumstances, but the sheer volume of it argues for more altruistic reasons. I have been subscribed to many mailing lists for open source projects over the years, and I am continually amazed at the willingness of skilled developers to answer, repeatedly, the same novice questions. That's not much fun in itself, so why do they do it?

The only open source project that I have been intimately involved with is my own SearchStatus, a Firefox extension mainly aimed at the needs of search marketers. Since it went public late last year, there have (probably) been over 200,000 downloads. I get quite a lot of questions and comments too, and I try to answer every one. The response to that is generally one of amazement and gratitude. Why?

I think the answer lies in that we have been conditioned to accept the mass market view of the world, where speaking directly to the most relevant person about the product you are interested in is just impossible. And the goodwill that comes out of these exchanges is more than enough for me to keep on building and improving. After all, it's the same force that keeps the bloggers blogging (open source journalism?) and I certainly don't need to elaborate on that.

P.S. I've just released SearchStatus 1.8, which contains a Keyword Density Analyser (suggested by Rob) and an improved PageRank fetching algorithm (suggested from user feedback). Thanks guys!