The GeoNode project has grown from an idea and a handful of early partners 5 years ago to a large and thriving open source project and downstream ecosystem. This talk will discuss the cast of characters and organizations that currently contribute to GeoNode, how this community has grown and evolved over time and the growing pains encountered and lessons learned in the process. Particular focus will be paid to the technical and collaborative aspects of growing and managing a diverse community, looking at how new community members are brought into the fold and how the resources that organizations with different needs and requirements bring to the table are marshaled most effectively to achieve economies of scale when developing new features. The GeoNode community has begun a quantitative analysis of organizational return on investment from open source and initial results of this study will also be presented.