Open collaborative design/What is the motivation to contribute?

These are some reasons why someone might want to contribute to the 'universal commons' of free and open designs:

• People can find other highly motivated people to work with on a project (wherever they might be in the world), enabling them to do things they couldn’t perhaps achieve alone, or to significantly speed up development

• They will be contributing to the 'open ecosystem' that freely offers designs that can be used no strings attached. After many years of perhaps using free and open designs many people will feel comfortable 'giving something back' - although they are under no obligation to do so.

• As an individual, using and building upon existing components and assemblies from the universal commons will allow people to create things of a complexity that they might not have otherwise been able to do, so they will be given a 'flying start' with whatever they build.

• Creative satisfaction - something rather lacking in this age of consumer culture

• Also a widely used design will give great satisfaction to the creator knowing that many other people are getting practical use or joy from it. As with software created in this way many people will give positive feedback and praise, and the creator(s) will enjoy great respect for their efforts

• As an end user, desired products and machines can be individually customised to a high degree

• Other people may evolve your design further, which could benefit you as they might improve it or make additions you hadn't thought of.

• The fun and challenge of working on an interesting project with other like-minded people.

• The concept of copyleft  (i.e. making sure that the details of the design are always available to everyone) changes the way people think about contributing their effort and time to creative open projects, as the contributions are for the benefit of everyone and anyone. Any contributions and improvements benefit all who have an interest in that project.

• Ultimately they will be similar reasons that motivate the people who currently contribute to open-source software and projects like Wikipedia.