Abstract: In a quest to find out how the use of virtual communities may impact the characteristics of knowledge worker teams, a novel kind of virtual community is discovered -the federal virtual community (FVC). Unlike conventional centralized virtual communities, FVC adopts a distributed community structure. Ourinet, an open source software community and an FVC, is examined to uncover the strengths of an FVC and what it takes to ensure the quality of project output from members. A conceptual model is derived form the literatures and then modified according to the case analysis. The model infers that clear positioning and advanced communication mechanisms alone, are not sufficient in operating such a virtual community. Effective face-to-face communications and formal contracts from the physical world are still necessary in assuring good output quality
