Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

The Wesnoth devs are good but not exceptionally so, and we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++). Nevertheless our productivity, in terms of goals achieved per hour of work, is quite high.

Anybody who has ever owned a dog who barked when strangers came near its owner's property has experienced the essential continuity between animal territoriality and human property. Our domesticated cousins of the wolf know, instinctively, that property is no mere social convention or game, but a critically important evolved mechanism for the avoidance of violence. (This makes them smarter than a good many human political theorists.)

Every good work of software starts by scratching a developers personal itch.

Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them.

To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.

Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.