Agreed -- what is needed is a peaceful transition of power from one BDFL to the next (which we've seen with many projects) or (better) to a benevolent oligarchy

Agreed -- what is needed is a peaceful transition of power from one BDFL to the next (which we've seen with many projects) or (better) to a benevolent oligarchy. A democracy, on the other hand, is emphatically the wrong way to build software (or, frankly, anything) -- and for open source in particular it leads one down the ruinous path of open source governance.[1] [1] http://smartos.org/2012/07/27/corporate-open-source-anti-patterns-doing-it-wrong/ http://smartos.org/2012/07/27/corporate-open-source-anti-pat...