IT world runs a very interesting article explaining why Open source is not a democracy, and never should. Some interesting quotes :
“No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But
we are not voting on design decisions.”“Shuttleworth is in the right here. Ubuntu and a vast majority of free and open source software projects, including the Linux kernel, have never been democracies. They are meritocracies, and any member of a community that thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.”
“too many hands on a project with no consensus of direction leads to a pretty crappy project“
“It’s critical to recognize that open source does not bring complete democracy to software development. It never did, and it never should. Ultimately, someone in the developer chain will have to make the tough calls.”
So, if you run your software development project as a Democracy, there might be some things you can learn from Open Source.
