Traditional proprietary methods of software development are nowadays facing increasing competition by open-source models. Community of users and developers has become a valuable resource which is more and more extensively used also at commercial products, especially in E-learning. Noting that free and open-source systems have reached at least equal status with the traditional proprietary developments, the author also suggests that existence of a strong community becomes more and more a crucial success factor for E-learning management systems (LMS) regardless of the development model. IVA, a LMS developed at Tallinn Pedagogical University, is used as an example. KEYWORDS Community-based development, E-learning, learning management systems