Introduction
The movement of developers – neophytes and experienced alike – to the iPhone with the launch of its app store has been likened to a gold rush—http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/inside-iphone-app-gold-rush-98856. Few people would hold the California gold rush of 1849 up as a shining example of humans behaving with humanity, though.
Selfish drive for profit broke up existing communities: three-quarters of adult men in San Francisco left the city during the rush, excited to find new deposits of gold to exploit. They even destroyed other communities, coming into conflict with the Native Americans in the region as they dug up the land the indigenous people inhabited. Paranoid self-protection led to rule of the mob and uncommonly harsh punishments for crimes of property: hanging was a common consequence for those thought to have stolen gold from another.
So, is the gold rush an acceptable model for today's programmers? Are we free to seek the highest financial...