There are many books published that explain how to build communities, but not so many explaining how to build a developer community, and hardly any which focus on open source communities. Some might say that open source communities "just happen", and that they operate on intuition and unwritten social rules, but this logic overlooks the vast quantity of open source projects that fail.
Given the importance of the communities around open source software, it's essential to understand the hallmarks of successful open source communities when starting your own open source project. Creating an effective framework in which the community can operate often makes the difference between success and failure.
Phil Whitehouse's blog
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