Henrik Ingo did an excellent
analysis
of open source project size versus governance structure a few years
ago. Essentially, the nine largest, most vibrant open source communities
were anchored inside nonprofit foundations. The 10th largest was 10
times smaller than the ninth and existed inside a corporation. Like a
good engineer, Henrik provided his data and listed his assumptions. He
was not suggesting that the growth was causal, simply that there was a
strong correlation. He rightly observed that it will be fascinating to
see what it all means using OpenStack as an example when he
presented his findings in summer 2011. (He wrote an excellent follow-up
post comparing cloud projects later.)
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