Open Source Communities: Who’s In Charge?

“In our knowledge-based society, communities of knowledge
sharing and production are increasingly common. The communities
typically bring together geographically dispersed members who
depend upon the Internet for communication and coordination. While
the members do not share a common employer or workplace, they
integrate their individual contributions into a common pool. Though
there are many communities out there, producing all kinds of
scientific and general knowledge and even art, ‘open source
communities’ commonly refer to groups that band together to develop
a source code of software, which is available to the general public
and has not one source but many ‘open’ sources. The community
creates informal and formal social structures to manage
membership.

“Scholars understand a great deal about how bureaucratic
organizations work, but they know a lot less about how open source
communities govern themselves…”

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