Yes,yes, yes. Is it a cultural thing why this gets lost? Is it the abscence of an enemy (Microsoft?)? Is it the cultivatism of kids today who are willing to pay for the download while 20 years ago Napster boomed? Is it the everything can be monetized and professionalized attitute vs. amateurism? I truly wonder.
I am 45 and I experienced the net and hackerism of 20 years ago as a wonderful world which it is no more today and I can't really say why.
Perhaps it has to do with the rise of the "precariat"? Younger nerds are more worried about trying to survive than hacking Free Software for fun? It is often claimed that basic income would give a boost to such volunteering.
I don't think it's that it got lost, but rather that a lot more money got into open source development. While I was at school I was really interested in hacking on Mozilla, where they were espousing ideals about meritocracy. After a while I realized that it really mean the folks they employed to work on Firefox had all the power, simply because they had more hours per day changing everything so casual contributors couldn't keep up.
It made sense for them, of course, since they can't hire that many people and just have them sit on their thumbs all day.
I am 45 and I experienced the net and hackerism of 20 years ago as a wonderful world which it is no more today and I can't really say why.