Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

Did you ever wonder why you're involved in the Free Software community? What makes you spend all this time on programming, patching, packaging, documenting, bug-fixing, and generally improving Free Software? What keeps you motivated?

Dave Neary of the GNOME project has a very good explanation: Freedom.

Free software taught me that I could learn and grow without someone telling me that I could.

Freedom is not having to ask permission.