"The last one, in particular, seems to imply that those who are most likely to think a community really has a mission (as opposed to the illusion of a mission) are the most extreme of the bunch, the hard-liners, the obnoxious ones."
To tie this back to the original question, I was thinking of actual open source projects. It is common when a group of people form to build a software package that the concept for what the capability is, is reasonably clear to the founding members. Make a better FOO. Then, some other people come along and don't understand that mission or try to advocate a different mission, like another BAR mission. The relevance of their input can be higher if they are productive people, but often they are not, and they are just in the way and taking up space, participating in advocacy of dubious value, etc. It is different from a commercial enterprise in so far as "make a better FOO" is measured some way other than by ROI in money. "Better" can mean technical properties that the group understands and see worth pursuing for its own sake. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
