Ankh: Well, I don't mean that I thought all projects would be without fights. A flamewar every now and again will most likely happen, but it shouldn't by any means by the norm of getting things done. I agree, I think the way for a project to work efficiently is to adopt the idea of "scratching someone else's itch". Atleast, it seems like what we should be aiming at doing... :)
lkcl: I completely agree. I always try to take into account what would help other people when I work on something. The only reason I get involved with projects is because I want to give back and help people out. If I wanted to do something for myself, a group environment does not seem the place to do that. When you have 100s of people who are supposed to be working together all doing something just for themselves, you end up with all of those people fighting with each other. It seems to be exactly what happens with Gentoo, since as other people have observed, each team normally interacts with its own members fine...its just when those teams have to deal with each other that the flames start to fly. If each team realized that interacting with others is a basic requirement for being part of a group project, I think things would go a lot more smoothly, but unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.