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Why We Love Things We Build Ourselves

Posted by samzenpus on from the labor-of-love dept.

RichDiesal writes "The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert with much greater skill had created the same item. Is this the reason that open source software proponents are so 'enthusiastic' about their products while the general market resists them – because those proponents had a hand in developing them?"

2 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Around since the dawn of time - NOT IKEA! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A person who has fashioned an item from the start will implicity trust it in operation until proved otherwise, because they saw it's construction. This is true of any tool in any era. That trust is extended to "experts" generally because those are individuals whom other people you trust (that have tools provided by said expert) have recommended for that same "the tool works for me" reason.

    Quite why we need to ascribe a brand name to this offends my sensibilities. Not everything requires a brand.

  2. Say what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I usually like Open Source software but the reason has very little to do with the source being available.
    What I really like is projects that are made on hobby basis without an economic driving force behind them.
    This is because those things are usually made to solve a problem and do it well.
    Once a project goes commercial marketing enters the picture and suddenly the application gets a splash-screen for no apparant reason. Then the buttons grow and become bulky. The interfac will be reworked to be "userfriendly" which is marketing speak for "easy to demonstrate a simple function but if you actually are going to use it you will no longer be able to find the functions you are looking for" or possibly "friendly for beginner but not for users"

    I am probably not representative for open source proponents since I don't mind closed source on an ideological basis.