To me it's about how low-bandwidth communication channels limit collaboration. Linux and FOSS grew up (congrats!) and the important work got super big and comp

To me it's about how low-bandwidth communication channels limit collaboration. Linux and FOSS grew up (congrats!) and the important work got super big and complex. Unfortunately, online communication - typically the channel preferred by FOSS projects - has much lower bandwidth than teams working full time in an office. Thus limiting the "depth" of collaboration. It's not all bad. FOSS does have some profound success to be proud of. For small and well-defined projects "benevolent dictator for life" works! Anything one person can lead - a desktop tool or a library - FOSS produces really good outcomes. But above say, a package manager or a distro.. things get wonky. Again it's not all bad. FOSS is rolling up its sleeves. Folks are organically doing the "go down every avenue people are motivated to go down" thing. You could call it Darwinism. But many motivated communities lack resources to go far enough to reach value. Motivation stalls during projects (we're human!), and FOSS rarely comes with a motivation-boosting paycheck. Plenty of valiant efforts don't reach value and it's never malicious. It's OK! So is there a way to better concentrate efforts? If the paths are long, it follows that the community should tackle fewer paths. The path(s) taken should be well defined, charted in advance as much as possible, and not uncovered bit by bit - or the work will take decades. Growing an entire ecosystem around one path forward (or a few) requires alignment. Can enough trust be fostered in leaders to get people to work on a shared vision? A vision of what Linux on the desktop should/could converge to is the kind of problem that, if Linux were a company, would be bet-the-company strategic. A company can't afford to go down two paths. So it might lock its smartest people in a room to hash out one true strategy. Or have one smart person dictate one vision and align everyone on it. Can that be done for FOSS? In the bounds of a single project it has been proven that it can. But what about an entire ecosystem?