It is self-stimulating. Examples can be seen in free software communities, in which new programmers, documenters and debuggers come from the ranks of free software users. It is self-directing. Free software users provide feedback to developers in the form of bug reports, patches and requests for new features. Software projects can be forked by users when an existing developer group is not responsive to their needs.
Maintainers are then free to adopt the new work or go their own way.
It is decentralized and non-authoritarian. In a free software community, developer groups maintain their positions only as long as they are responsive to their user bases. No one is forced to participate in a project, and the projects people participate in are the ones in which they are interested. Involuntary activity places limits on exchange and creates scarcities. As such, it is non-agalmic.