I wonder if it's because the time investment demanded of the BDFL is so high. If there were more people and each put in smaller amounts of their time to work on

I wonder if it's because the time investment demanded of the BDFL is so high. If there were more people and each put in smaller amounts of their time to work on the project, then it would be possible to sustain it without having to depend on the charity of users. I get the feeling that projects like Python operate like this but I have no data to back my claim.