Why People Contribute To Open Source Software Projects?

This is a long subject and i will try to help as much as possible.
Well For the hackers (The ethical ones Called White Hats), programmers and the computer enthusiasts that contribute usually have a culture of following an ethical guideline. And no, not all hackers spend their time ruining people’s life.
Most ethical hackers believe that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and computing resources wherever possible.
Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic and many act on it by writing free software, giving the user permission to study, modify, and redistribute it.
This is what ethical hackers (White Hats) believe:
-Access to computers and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works should be unlimited and total.
-All information should be free.
-Mistrust authority promote decentralization.
-You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better.
Take a look at these links this will actually help you a lot:http://www.openxtra.co.uk/articles/why-d…http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=…
This is what an Ethical hacker is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_Hac…
This is the ethics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Ethi…
And this is an article on Open source and its popularity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
This might just be only one aspect of it.
People have their own reason that range from personal interests to dissatisfaction about something or good will.
It could be the need for attention and acknowledgment, gaining a reputation, to learn something new while sharing experiences or also can be politically motivated.
It could be for a hobby or an activity that is done to consume time and give accomplishment.
These people would have similar interests and goals they want to share and accomplish together more easy.
these people get confidence from being part of a team, part of a community, belonging, getting respect, reputation and climbing ranks and taking pride in becoming e.g. mods or admins.
These are additional links if you want to learn about online culture
these are the more malicious programmers:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_hat