2008/11/15 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
Most often a project or organization does not fail due to some catastrophic happening from without; these they are prepared for and can defend against. What does prove to be its final undoing is a corrosion of its product & culture from within. To put it plainly: The product this Project is putting out has become incredibly sloppy, both in content and presentation. There are clear symptoms, and if detected and corrected soon enough, such a collapse can be prevented. I sense a hubris regarding the Project that is disturbing; and can ultimately prove to be its undoing.
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (Clay Shirky):
http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Note that Wikipedia is given as an example of a group that had evaded this. Oh well.
In open source software, forking usually remedies the problem, with possible remerging. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) .
- d.