The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Albert Wagner]

You are absolutely right about altruism.  Fortunately, altruism isn't
required for cooperative strategies to evolve in a society.  All that is
required is that a "critical mass" of participants realize that the
shared rewards of long term cooperation exceed the rewards of short term
reward at the expense of others.  Those with uncooperative strategies
view the pie as finite and feel that they must optimize their slice by
diminishing the share of others.  Those with cooperative strategies have
discovered that there are an infinite number of pies. 
-- 
Small is Beautiful