Collaboration and cooperation

Nancy White has an excellent blog on "Challenging the myths of distributed collaboration". She points to a critical issue --- that these efforts need to be based on a cooperative value set. There is the key challenge. Can collaboration be cooperative without that common value set? Or what value set do individuals have with any work that they collaborate on? There seems to be small groups that propose the end result of their code, and hence product, is for the greater good but we are seeing large dollar transactions occur when their idea (product) has a high commercial value and it is subsequently sold. The excitement of something unique and workable will always create the "buzz" necessary for it to become popular. Popularity tends to have a material side to it though. Aren't users part of the collaborative spirit? Maybe that is what they mean by free enterprise!