Sociological question about Debian, GNU, and Linux

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@peakpeak.com>]

The recent discussions of Red Hat's change of policy got
me thinking about the larger issue of what makes the
Debian, GNU, and Linux communities work? Yes, I have read
lots of opinions, but I wonder if anyone knows of some
proper academic people studies, the sort of thing that
might legitimately get published in a referred journal of
sociology or anthropology?

I'm not interested in generating opinion pieces on this
list. If the text doesn't run to 20 or 30 pages with 2 or
3 pages of references, its not what I'm looking for.

TIA

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@peakpeak.com