[millstone]

Open source projects tend to be almost entirely remote. That’s qualitatively different from a company like Yahoo!, which I imagine to be majority in-office, with some remotes.

From the link you shared (which I strongly agree with):

There’s no halfsies in a distributed team. If even one person on the team is remote, every single person has to start communicating online... no more dropping in to someone’s office to chat, no more rounding people up to make a decision

So the in-office members are forced into contortions to accommodate the remotes. That may be OK if the team is committed to the practice, like stack exchange is. But if Yahoo! is run like a traditional company, designed around in-office work with occasional exceptions made for remotes, then those remotes burden the in-office team members, and absolutely hinder communication.