At the risk of sounding naive, I'm concerned about how members of the free and open source software (FOSS) community treat each other. No doubt in most parts of the community, people are getting things done while keeping civil. But, publicly, or when the big issues are raised, a sustained nastiness has crept into discussions over the last year or so.

In-fighting within the open source community needs to stop or risk further alienating companies, attendees at the Cape IT Initiative's (CITI) FOSS event heard last week.