Conflicts in Open-Source Communities

Open source communities are collections of sometimes hundreds if not thousands of individuals who have different interests, backgrounds and motives. Currently, most of these individuals are still volunteers who do not get paid to participate in open source communities (Hertel, 2003). Furthermore, most of them never get to see each other in real life; they meet virtually, in places on the Internet. Yet, they are able to collectively develop software that is highly complex. Furthermore, many companies and governments worldwide have started to adopt software that is developed in open source communities. Consider for instance the New York Stock Exchange, which depends on an open source infrastructure and related services to support their mission-critical business processes. Two best-known examples of open source communities are without doubt Linux and Apache.

The question that occupies many is: how is software developed in open source communities? How is it possible that volunteers are able to create complex software that is competitive with software developed in companies?