Despite being distributed across the globe, and communications being largely conducted online, open source projects can benefit immensely from direct human contact, says one of the fathers of Debian Linux.
Bdale Garbee, who is also HP’s Linux chief technology officer, is a big fan of “The Meatspace” as way to further development efforts. This probably comes as a surprise to people accustomed to hearing that the open source movement has flourished courtesy of the internet.