Communities Vs. Teams: Open Source Needs Both

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Article Source InformationWeek’s Open Source Weblog
November 13, 2009, 9:53 am

A curious insight has come from all the recent talk about MySQL/Sun/Oracle. People talk about a community around a given open source product, but there’s at least as much talk about a team within it. Let’s not neglect the importance of either of those things.

Some of this thinking arose from talk about some of the gloomier prospects for MySQL, speculation which goes as far back as Sun’s purchase of the company. What good is the software without the team of people who built it? It’s difficult to replace the synergy you get from such people (and I hate that word, but it’s really the only one that fits) with folks who have been largely on the outside looking in…

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