The real free-rider problems in open-source software are more a function of friction
costs in submitting patches than anything else. A potential contributor with little
stake in the cultural reputation game (see [HtN] ) may, in the absence of money
compensation, think ``It's not worth submitting this fix because I'll have to clean
up the patch, write a ChangeLog entry, and sign the FSF assignment papers...''. It's
for this reason that the number of contributors (and, at second order, the success
of) projects is strongly and inversely correlated with the number of hoops each
project makes a user go through to contribute. Such friction costs may be political