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One thing which keeps coming up recently in interviews major OSS project leaders and pundits, including me, is this idea of the "benevolent dictator" as project leader, and of such an individual as an unalloyed asset to project advancement. This meme comes primarily, I believe, from the comparison between Linux and BSD, based on the concept that BSD had "failed" and Linux had "succeeded." Casual newsreaders and writers who don't want to hear about 25 years of complex project and legal history -- or even evaluate their criteria for success -- seize on simplistic comparisons like "dictator good, democracy bad"; "GPL good, BSD bad"; "four legs good, two legs bad." This allows them to wrap up the whole comparison in one paragraph or even one line. Of course, like other simplistic comparisons it's nonsense.