Dear Charlie - Susan Arai has been working in this area defining the volunteer in relation to the civil society. Also her thesis is in this area from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Nothing about open source I believe but still she does the 'hard yards' on working up the volunteer-society relationships. She's probably published much more since I flagged this citation. Arai, S. M. (2000). "Typology of volunteers for a changing sociopolitical context: The impact on social capital, citizenship and civil society." Loisir et Soeiete/Society and Leisure 23: 327-352. Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis in revision, School of Environ. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tuesdays: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0427 245 497 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com