3.1. The Hacker Community as a Gift Culture

Due to the fact that computers are very cheap, common and powerful, the open-source hackers culture is essentially a "gift culture", as Anthropologists refer to it.
Such a culture does not have a lack of resources, and its members do not need to struggle to survive.
Instead, they are trying to increase their peer repute (which is by no means fame!), and so are trying to make better impressions on their peers.
This is done by producing or working on important open-source programs, which are distributed without charge.