It doesn't really have to be this way... I remember the early Linux
community well, and a point of pride was that the community didn't suffer
from the infighting found in the *bsd community (what ever happened to
Bill Jolitz anyway... I heard of a death in the family, and then little
else).
What brought on the infighting was people with a vested interest, either
monitary or ego based. ESR is a fine example, as were some of the
developers of early commercial distributions... but even developers
get into the "us and them" mentality...