TOAAllTechnical

Seems like my inspiration is 90% based on FreeSoftware. Perhaps that's a special case. After all geeks are weird. And maybe the kind of motivation that EricRaymond talks about are playing out.

I don't think so. I think we've seen the amateurs outperform the professionals in software first, because 'that community is ahead of everyone else in using the internet to share information and build communities. But all of Raymond's motivations could be imagined working in any community that values expertise. It already does in academic science (and other parts of academia).