Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft -- A Model for Non-profits and Open Source Projects
Ferdinand Tönnies set out to develop concepts that could be used as analytic tools for understanding why and how the social world is organized in "Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft" (1887). What he couldn't realize is that he was giving us good tools for thinking about how open source software communities are organized and why there can be confusion and friction as project communities and non-profits mix.
Experience level:
Intermediate