It took me a year to university to figure out that every open organization should either have its own theoretical group. Or, if its resources are limited and/or there are no skills to form one, to align itself with a theoretical working group of an affiliated group. Practice on its own isn't good enough, PRACTICE of THEORY MUST BE A PROCESS, like the the rest of the practice is. If this is not done, an open-org is in danger of commiting grave mistakes, so much that its own work can be entirely contra-productive. Practicing theory within a working group doesn't necessarily remove that risk - it reduces it.

why let theory happen somewhere else?

What often happens, both in free software and in political activism of all kinds, is that some of the participants do do theory, but on their own, as part of some institution or informal group - yet always formaly disconected from activism of free sofware they take part in. That's wrong! It only plays into the hands of a kind of science, economic and sociological, that is at the core of capitalist revolutions past and present - this has to be formulated/explained well.

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