Open source and Communities

Terranova's essay certainly raises an interesting point, but has several flaws that appear obvious to me (most likely because of my historical position). First of all, the comparison of open source labor to "AOL community volunteer" labor is a problematic one, and ultimately breaks down. We must remember that AOL is a company, and has invented the title/myth of "community volunteer" that AOL users are free to identify themselves as. Open source certainly operates on ideological levels, but almost operates counter to AOL; volunteers do not recognize themselves as subject to a company; instead, they recognize themselves as subject to a community. This idea of community as Subject is something that runs through all of open source and even (to a limited extent) Web 2.0, and is further revealed by the fact that it is often the community, not the company, that controls the evolution of the web site/service/product (take for example, the Digger's revolt over the removal of a story revealing the HD-DVD encryption key (09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0) (also see: http://blog.digg.com/?p=74, where the power of the community over the company (or rather, the inclusion of the community as controllers of the company) is made incredibly clear), or the Monome community's forum theorization of the definition of Open Source Hardware (http://post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=2646&page=1#Item_34; note that this is something done collectively, creating a synthesis out of diverse opinions in an almost Hegelian manner, and while the operator of the Monome 'company,' Brian Crabtree (aka Tehn) offers opinions, he does not control the debate) (and on another side note, I realize that this theory is lacking without proof of concept from the Linux community, something I am unfamiliar with and don't entirely understand (except to say that the fracturing of Linux distros has served to create communities rather than subjects of Linus Torivald). The community, through expression, revolt, and use/abuse of the construct of the community/product/software created by the controlling company, is able to control the company's (and the software's) development Other examples can be found within communities such as Wikipedia. Of course, this interpellation is drawn into question by the events of Yahoo's takeover of Flickr (which prompted a mass exodus from Flickr, and caused Yahoo to make little change, but did not actually affect the original point of contention; that is, the switch from a Flickr ID to a Yahoo ID for signing in), or in the recient failure of the Facebook community to 'roll back' Facebook to the "old" state, cases in which a company managed to overcome the community formed by their service in reasserting their ideology. Essentially, my theory is limited in the fact that while Web 2.0 communities can use their voice to control the evolution of the community/product/software, it still ultimately rests under the control of the company. Another problem comes from the fact that many open source projects are "managed" by Foundations or Corporations (in the case of Linux, the "Free Software Foundation," in the case of Firefox, the "Mozilla Corporation"). However, I again stress that my knowledge of these particular communities/projects/productions (Linux and Firefox) is limited.