If I may take the conversation up to an academic level here, I always like Conway's Law: "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce des

If I may take the conversation up to an academic level here, I always like Conway's Law: "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conways_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conways_Law) Most software is built in institutional organizations (banks, universities) or by commercial software vendors or otherwise hierarchical, departmental organizations. Therefore, almost all investment in software practice result in software designs and control structures that support hierarchical, departmental organizations. Emacs and TeX are very different human organizations. Decentralized, ad hoc, stigmergic [1], meritocratic. Very few projects are organized this way and so very few people look at software design patterns that support these kinds of projects. [1] Stigmergy is self-organized coordination and collaboration managed indirectly through the object being worked on. cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy The most popular discussions of this I've seen are Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-baz...) and Coase's Penguin (http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html).