[OSCOM] Some questions about open-source project governance

The recent split in the Mambo community got me thinking about project
governance.  

>From a distance I thought Mambo could benefit from a separate foundation
to govern the project, but it seems that the community couldn't get
there without splitting.  Also, one of the subtexts to the dispute
apparently was a disagreement about software development -- specifically
over the trade-off between functionality & complexity.  

Meanwhile, the guys at Alfresco (www.alfresco.org) claim to be building
a broadly capable "enterprise" document management system, all while
keeping tight control over code commits, at least in the near term.  

So my questions for the group are:

 - Is some sort of foundation an essential step in the maturation of an
open-source project?  It seems like a lot of major OS CMS packages are
going that way.

 - If so, what's the best way initially to create a board to govern an
open-source project?

 - How do you balance broad community participation on the one hand, and
code quality & application simplicity on the other? 

 - Do projects that create an architecture for 3rd-party, add-on
"plug-ins" or "products" have a leg up here?  If so, how do you respond
to inevitable community demands to "certify" add-on modules?  

 - Do open-source infrastructure (webserver, DB, operating system)
projects have an easier go of this than CMS packages, despite the
formers' large size?  It seems to me they do, particularly in setting
scope.

Thanks for any feedback.

----------------------------------------------
Tony Byrne              Silver Spring, MD  USA
Founder, CMS Watch          V: +1 301 585 7004

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