There's no company that operates at a scale comparable to the Linux kernel and still has a single individual taking the final call about merging code into trunk

There's no company that operates at a scale comparable to the Linux kernel and still has a single individual taking the final call about merging code into trunk. Linux kernel development works perfectly well using mailing lists. The fact that it discourages people who can't bother spending 15 minutes to learn how to send a patch is a feature, not a bug.