Jimmy Wales did not build Wikipedia. Thousands upon thousands of unpaid volunteers did.

As for Howard Roark, who is supposed to epitomize Ayn Rand's "virtue of selfishness" ideal, I don't remember him being any kind of philanthropist. If anything, he (like Rand) has nothing but contempt for the masses.

Wikipedia would be the antithesis of what Roark would want to build. The Encyclopedia Britannica would be more to his liking, except that even it would require too much cooperation and would be made to help others and instead of himself.

Rand's ideal is the lone visionary designing his brilliant artwork for his own pleasure, and to the gnashing of teeth of the ignorant horde who are jealous of his genius.

Hmm, I don't know. Seems like much of Wikipedia is by smart people for smart people (like NPR). We all think of Wikipedia as the commons but it's far from it. Most people are on perezhilton.com all day.

Anyway, Ayn Rand was more against the falseness around giving and the betrayal of the recipient when he is given something he could never earn.

Are we talking about smart people, or rich people? Because they aren't the same category.

You could say the same about any business owner if you said thousands of paid employees built their business. Almost nobody builds something that lasts by themselves.

I don't think that's the same. A business needs a lot of coordination that is not (currently) possible with a crowdsourcing approach and people work for money. Founders of a crowdsourcing endeavor have its merits but at the end is the community working hard (many times harder than in a business) who owe the praise.

I also think the Marxist concept of owing "something" to the historic process is missing in a lot of extreme selfish philosophies.

I agree with this. The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books, but Wales is no Roark.

'unpaid volunteer' is a tautology in this context.

Not to take away from his achievements but like Sal Khan (who has done similarly with Khan Academy) he'd already made his money in investment banking before entering the tech world.

It makes a huge difference when choosing to go the non-profit vs profit route when you're already personally well off.

Eh, Sal Khan was a 30-something hedge fund analyst when he started Khan Academy. He's intelligent, hard-working, and could find work somewhere else, but he wasn't exactly "set for life" if the Khan Academy thing didn't work out. So don't let that stop you going the non-profit route!