love free and open source software (FOSS). The cause -- essentially, an extension of free speech -- is one that I can get behind as a writer, and community members are not only brilliant but both passionate and practical at the same time. It's an exciting field, and the one in which I've chosen to make a career.

At times, though, the community can be its own worst enemy. Certain attitudes, often long-ingrained, make the community less united than it should be, and work against common goals, such as providing an alternative to proprietary software or spreading the FOSS gospel. Practically everyone in the community has been guilty of one or more of these attitudes at some time or other -- including me -- but we rarely talk about them. And, for this reason, the attitudes continue, hobbling community efforts.

1) Not knowing allies from enemies

Any time that communities are based on idealism or belief, infighting seems the norm. That's true for religious and political groups, so it's not surprising that infighting should be the norm for FOSS, where so many people hold strong opinions.

But, too often, the infighting seems more important than common goals. Several professional or semi-professional pundits make a career out of attacking other community members (never mind their names; if you've been around, you know who they are, and I refuse to encourage them by giving them free publicity).

At times, these pundits say things that nobody else will, as Jeremy Allison points out.

2) Talking software to outsiders

Software is a major interest to the FOSS community, so naturally community members spend a lot of time talking about it. However, if you're trying to interest other people in FOSS, talking about software only works if the audience is developers. For the rest, even the fact that FOSS costs nothing is not very interesting -- if it were, then more people would use shareware.

For most people, software is simply not a large interest, even if they use their computers ten or twelve hours a day.

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