New organizations have emerged from the increasing adoption of the Internet. One example is the so-called virtual community. Most virtual communities consist of people who are focused on solving or discussing a certain problem or issue . Literature about collective action (Olson, 1965) and common property resource management (Ostrom, 1990) pre dicts that cooperation and coordination in such communities would be difficult to achieve and sustain. Perhaps this is why many virtual commu nities remain popular for just a limited amount of time without ever hav ing much economic impact. One exception, however, is the so-called open source andfree software communities. In open source and free software communities, Internet users, prima rily hobbyists, develop an enormous variety of software. Communities like Linux, Apache and Debian are the flagships of open source and free software communities. These communities have proven themselves ca pable of developing software that can compete with the products of even a commercial software giant like Microsoft.
