John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla foundation, did a great presentation at last WordCamp San Francisco. His most valuable points are: decentralized decision-making and treating community members like citizens.
The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we live, communicate, and innovate. In traditional companies, people with positional power, such as CEO and CTO, are the ones who make the key decisions. That is not going to work advantageously in the Web era, particular in open source communities. In these new settings, the best ideas are often originated outside of the corporate doors, from some unknown but passionate community members. Ideas and proposals are debated and selected based on merit. That is more democratic and history has proven that democracy is superior to dictatorship.
