So there it was in the news again. Craig Newmark of Craigslist had decided not to cash in on his famous lists used by people for their various selling - of things notable and not-so-notable - and then the various meet and greets - for (some) nefarious and other common purposes. Okay, so I've ever only sold one thing on Craigslist. One of my colleagues emptied out her whole store of antiques that she was selling for a downsizing effort. I've tried to rent out a floor of my house once through this list...and got spammed by a lot of phishers and fraudulent emailers. I was caught by his concept of not cashing in. So why wouldn't he cash in? The article I read didn't add a lot of elaboration. So I thought I would speculate. People were used to having people-to-people ads, not high corporate ones on that space. They bought into this because it's a free service. This would lose its cachet if he "sold out." Maybe he has an idealistic streak like Tim Berners-Lee, credited with founding the WWW. Maybe he is satisfied materially already and has non-materialistic satisfactions in not cashing in. Maybe he is satisfied with being linked to his creation...but I tend to think poet Anna Akhmatova had it right when she wrote that the world's fame is but smoke. Indeed, others who would cash in on this model have been circling, and articles in the press have suggested that various products will and have been launched to create the synergies of electronic meeting places for various interchanges (the electronic bazaar, let's say). Maybe there's the idea of the multiplier effect of generosity, something like Bill's example of extreme charitable giving to his friend Warren. Maybe it's as simple as the inertia of not wanting to spoil a good thing...in the ethos of open source.