Editing Community Organizing (section)

== The Movement as an Occupational Community ==

A movement or online community can be viewed as an Occupational Community.

An occupational community forms when members of a profession develop a shared sense of identity, values, and practices that extend beyond just their work activities. In the context of free and open source software (F/OSS), developers have formed a unique occupational community that exists primarily in virtual spaces. Like other occupational communities, F/OSS developers build networks with fellow members to find job opportunities, learn specialized development techniques, stay current with technical advancements, and socialize through online channels like chat rooms and mailing lists. What makes the F/OSS occupational community distinctive is that it emerged from an ideological foundation - the free software movement - and operates mainly through virtual collaboration rather than physical proximity. Members share common beliefs about software freedom while developing their own systems of values and rules that govern their virtual communities (perhaps you can see how a virtual community could establish a virtual state).

The Occupational Community Model can be described as:
* involvement in and identify with work;
* inclusiveness of work; and
* isolation from the rest of society.

The survivability of a community and their projects increases as the occupational community grows larger. Therefore it is critical for the projects that we focus on community growth.

Whether and how a software ecosystem successfully evolves over time depends to a large extent on the activeness and interaction of its community participants. Participant turnover and abandonment pose important threats with respect to knowledge loss and resources and time to familiarise new members.

Participants have a higher probability of abandoning an ecosystem when they: (1) do not communicate with other participants; (2) do not have a very strong social and technical activity intensity; (3) communicate or contirbute(commit) less frequently; and (4) do not communicate or contribute(commit) for a longer period of time.

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