In the 90s Internet technology enabled a new paradigm of software development to emerge. This new paradigm of distributed collaboration has become known as the Open Source Development model and the resulting software in general known as Open Source Software. The loosely knit community that develops this software has become known as the Open Source Community. Initially the community was dismissed as young, undisciplined amateurs, and the development method was considered too ad-hoc and chaotic for serious projects. However, the success of products such as Apache, Linux, and Perl, as well as other open source software have demonstrated that Open Source is a viable alternative to traditional software development. Studies show that the community demographics, practices, and motivations do not fit previous conceptions of the Open Source community (Hissam, Plakosh, Weinstock & Asundi, 2001).

This paper seeks to analyze the Open Source community’s culture and its leadership styles to understand what practices a firm needs to adapt to or adopt in order to work effectively with the Open Source community. Open Source practices can also contribute to more effective management of distributed-collaborative projects that are not in the Open Source domain.

Several names, including free software and libre software have been used to identify the community and software developed through this open collaboration. Each name has different shades of meaning and proponents of each hold slightly different views with respect to the commercialization of software. Open Source is the re-branding of Free Software. (Raymond, 1999a), to overcome confusion about the term free and the negative impression that gave businesses. The divisions over Free Software, Libre Software, and Open Source Software within the community are real (Elliott, 2003; Ghosh, Rishab, Glott, Krieger & Robels, 2002); however, they generally do not interfere with members working together and are of little importance to most of the community (Ghosh, et al, 2002). In practice, Open Source Software is available at no cost, usually from the Internet. Or it can be purchased from distributors and value added resellers.

The term Open Source software will be used to mean all software where the source code is publicly available, can be copied and redistributed, and can be modified with the only restriction being that the modifications are included with any redistribution and consequently made public. As we will see, the issue of modifications being given back to the community is important. Also, and somewhat confusingly, Open Source community is used to identify the community as a whole and the subset of members working on a particular project where the subset may accept some practices that are inconsistent with community norms for the sake of the project.

There have been many articles dealing with the nature of the Open Source community and its beliefs, values, motivation, and methodologies written from observation and intuition. Recently, to quantify and objectively describe the community, studies have collected data on demographics and the culture of Open Source communities by surveys and analysis of electronic records kept by the project groups. Three particular standouts are:

The results of all three surveys are reasonably consistent, and paint a good picture of the typical open source developer (Kim, 2003). Companies, educational institutions, non-profits, and governments are increasingly turning to Open Source Software.

There is no doubt that industry has accepted and embraced Open Source Software. This is because some Open Source products have proven to be just as reliable and secure as similar commercial products that are on the market today. Both Linux and Apache have played a big role in gaining industry confidence in Open Source Software. (Hissam et al, 2001).

Several factors lead to the use Open Source Software. Among these are the attractiveness of open standards, lower price, freedom to customize the software, and avoiding single vendor lock-in. As companies adopt Open Source Software they have a growing need to work with the Open Source community. The Open Source community is the source for technical help, software updates, feature additions, and bug fixes. Understanding the culture of the Open Source community can facilitate smooth and successful project execution and a beneficial long term relationship.