Previous research into open source led to this article ‘The Cathedral and the Baazar by Eric Steven Raymond, Nov 2006. I like many others it seems who are involved in open-source software development have been influenced by some of the ideas that Raymond presents. A quote from the introduction:

Linus Torvalds’s style of development—release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity— came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here—rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who’d take submissions from anyoneanyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.