&gt; I wonder what personality trait in us programmers makes us willing to work without compensation on our free time and why it doesn&#x27;t seem to be present in artists<p>I don&#x27;t think it is much more prevalent in programmers than artists. (That&#x27;s why I also think that the &#x27;show me your GH profile&#x27;-style recruitment is shortsighted; most of the best coders I&#x27;ve ever met (who I consider geniuses, really) had no OSS contributions at all, they just make boatloads of money at bigcos (Google, MS, fintech)).