Taciturn

As part of an assessment of benevolent dictatorship as a governance model for free software projects, Ted Ts'o suggests:

If Debian had either explicitly stated an FSF-centric position [free software only], and only accepted members that supported point of view, or explicitly subscribed to a position that users should be able to use whatever software they feel meets their needs, as Ubuntu has, it would avoided many arguments that have threatened to tear apart Debian.

Perhaps some arguments would have been avoided, but having someone declare definitively that Debian is a pure free software distribution or that it isn't would cause it to lose a large part of its developer community. Despite the arguments, the ambiguity allows both purists and pragmatists to co-exist more-or-less in harmony, working together for a more-or-less common goal.

I think the point that really shines through (and Ted mentioned it) is that in free software projects, if the existing governance model is not working then anyone is free to fork it and try another method. Indeed that is the exact reason that Ubuntu was founded — to try to run a Debian-like project under the benevolent dictator model. Both Ubuntu and Debian continue to be popular (perhaps Ubuntu more with users and Debian more with developers?), and both are healthy projects well on their way to global domination.

(You should read Josh Berkus's article, The Myth of the Benevolent Dictator, from which all this spawned.)