There were people who were proud to call themselves tech geeks and a few who admitted being near-Luddites, and there was at least one person who called herself a radical technologist. They joined book publishers, librarians and computer consultants, some of whom had come from as far as Ireland and Brazil, at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Downtown Brooklyn on Saturday for something akin to a happening for the Internet age  Drupal Camp.

Drupal is free software used to run Web sites, and participants at the event said they were drawn there, despite differences in backgrounds and ideologies, by a belief in an almost utopian form of technological cooperation.

“We’re throwing out the idea of software as a commodity and replacing it with the idea of labor and participation being valued more than ownership,” Eric Goldhagen, a software consultant and developer from the East Village and a primary organizer of the event, told the gathering.

Drupal was developed by Dries Buytaert, a Belgian programmer, and nearly 10 years ago he made the Drupal code public, giving up formal control of his creation and letting people use it without charge with the stipulation that they share modifications and improvements with one another.