Any time you put more than two people in a room together and ask them to finish something, there will be politics. The only thing you can do is make sure everyo

Any time you put more than two people in a room together and ask them to finish something, there will be politics. The only thing you can do is make sure everyone has some goals that are the same as the organization's. In a corporation, this is achieved by paying people to be responsible for certain aspects of the company's operations. In a volunteer organization, this is accomplished by having the people in the organization socialize around the organization. Everyone has their reasons. Some people are motivated by producing beautiful functional code. Others are motivated by the ideals of Free Software. Still others want to use the community to sell hardware. At the end of the day, as long as they're all moving in a similar direction, the movement is successful. Whether or not the movement is a good thing depends on your values and motives.