Incredible. Once I figure out how to download it I`ll check it out, but again, why would someone work on this for free? Is it a college credit type of thing?
Altruism
Misguided hippie idealism
Hatred for Microsoft
Desire to undermine MS --> IBM, Sun, Novell and several big companies would like to see MS's stranglehold on the mkt broken and are big supporters of open source
Different business model -->making money from custom designing "applications of applications" (most OS database stuff)
A realization that it is the best out there for what it does, and you want to custom fit it to your project -->mostly for server software. Most servers are OS.
For one thing, open source has evolved to the point where not everybody working on it is working for free.
All software requires an underlying operating system to run. When your software runs on a proprietary operating system, you are beholden to the owner of that operating system, and things the owner does to that operating system can really mess you up. Microsoft has been suspected of tweaking their operating system so that other peoples' applications don't run as well as theirs.
IBM, Oracle, Sun, Novelle and many other major IT firms are contributing code to the Linxux kernel and Open Office because open source software gives them control over the environment. Linux is now Oracle's preferred platform. The most important feature of Open Office (http://openoffice.org/ is its ODF (Open Document Format) which will allow the free exchange of data among any applications you want. This is a tremendous advantage to everybody except Microsoft. Microsoft would like for everyone to be tethered to its proprietary document formats so that they are forced to use windows.
Another reason people develp open source projects is because sometimes no commercial software offers the features they want. One person might start a project that does a few things to photos, easily and quickly. He releases it as open source, and someone else who uses it likes it but it is lacking a few features he wants, so he writes some code and sends it to the original developer who adds it, and now they and anybody else who wants it has an even better litte application to use.
The GIMP is composed of all sorts of features that have been written by a number of people. Other projects have taken GIMP code and branched off into other areas, like video.
The open source model is, first and foremost, a way for people to cooperate to achieve a common goal. Open source software is documented to have fewer errors than commercial software. Microsoft has become so bloated and bureaucratic that multiple committees and years were spent on the login screen of Windows Vista alone. They are seriously trying to mimic the open source process now because it is more efficient and results in higher quality code.