The Problems with Being Virtual
- Limited Support for Coordination
- Keeping track of progress and potential conflict has required a
deluge of communication (e-mail)
- Maintaining the Agenda is a manual process
- Entry Barriers
- Difficult to browse the current software state
- Difficult to separate areas of development
- Apache succeeds in large part due to the unusual expertise of its
user/developers
- all Internet experts
- capable of compiling, installing software
- E-mail is not sufficient for resolving interpersonal conflicts
that are more than just "differences in opinion"
The first three problems can be reduced by better tools, but the latter
requires some form of synchronous, voice communication, preferably on a
regular basis.
The Apache Group:
A Case Study of Internet Collaboration and Virtual Communities
(Roy T. Fielding,
02 May 1997)
UCI School of
Social Sciences Seminar Series on the World-Wide Web