- The community is driven by a need, or interest, rather than profit for the initiator
- Participation is welcome, and encouraged, but a transparent “peer review” process dictates if the contribution will be used
- Recognition is offered to all participants.
Linux started with a promise, one that formed the basis of what has become a major player in the server operating system market, with a current share somewhere around 45%.
Linus Torvalds back in 1991 posted the following message on a discussion board inhabited by systems engineers “I am doing a free operating system (just a hobby) and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise to implement them”
Torvalds, knowingly or otherwise, tapped a vein that has proven on many occasions (Wikipedia.org & Meetup.com being just two), that a community has the chance to form when several conditions are met:
The promise is that these conditions will be met, and when they are not, the community fails, as did the first iteration of Wikipedia. Does yours measure up?
