The end of communities of practice in open source projects? : evidence from the Debian case
Bert M. Sadowski, Gaby Sadowski-Rasters · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2005
The piper explores the notion of team-based work that has recently been introduced in the discussion within Open Source Community (OSS) projects. In contrast to open boundaries within a community of practice, project-based teams refer to a relatively small group of collaborating people who operate within clear and relatively stable team boundaries and fit particular functions, roles, and norms. The history of Debian, in particular the discussion in recent leadership elections, has shown that there is an interest in team-based work. After characterizing the stages in the evolution of the Debian project, team-based work is considered as providing novel solutions to the problem of release management and growth problems within the Debian community.