Open-source as a self-regulating society

Maybe community open-source projects have social advantages over projects developed by organized work teams.

• it is usually obvious who is charge because most projects start as an individual effort
  
• being a member of the team depends very much on how much work you do
• because of the above, the person in charge has usually done a lot of the practical work
• the team members rarely meet so that working relationships are almost exclusively about work, and power games are hard to sustain.
  

I like Joel's analysis of why programmers don't like politics - half way down his field guide to developers.