How does an open source curriculum development community become a real, sustainable, entity?

Programmers largely live and work in cyberspace. For the ad-hoc development teams that built Drupal, the software that holds the Open Educator community together, the product and the project inhabit the same domain. Thousands of users and developers converge on the the Drupal forums, groups, and project development areas of the drupal.org site (run using drupal), in large part, because they are AT WORK on real web development projects and problems that demand real solutions, now, using drupal.

The prospect of teachers building an open source curriculum seems bound by a slightly more challenging set of constraints, insofar as the real value of a curriculum is largely contingent upon its carefully attuned, audience-adapted, "in the flesh" implementation in a classroom. Whereas a programmer's code will either "work" or "not work" with respect to a set of design specifications, the design of a classroom curriculum demands a far more nuanced and dynamic production process. The expert teacher's craft is difficult to capture in a merely logical, procedural language. The act of teaching is a "value-added," context-dependent product. Rich, effective pedagogy is inseparable from the soft-skills: the attitudes, relational habits, and big-picture, philosophical stance of the individual teacher. It is these soft skills that are perhaps the most difficult to teach, and are likely our greatest challenge in building internet-based curriculum development communities that make a measurable difference for students.

Nevertheless, the ability for a teacher to "plug in" to resources gathered from collective wisdom of a large, focused group of professionals can create a shift in the teachers' professional growth experience.  Backed with such power, a teacher's energies can be dramatically refocused on assessing, adapting, and responding to student needs in real time.   Such expert facility "in the moment" is typically a classroom skill attained only by successful, veteran teachers.

Our immediate challenge is to hatch curriculum development teams that can sustain themselves.   What structures and development tools will enable this? Is the motivation for participation sufficient for enough teachers to make this viable?   What frictions are there in the site that may prevent development teams from reaching a critical mass of active membership?  What additional supports and organizational strategies might take these ambitions to the next level?