[rtwast]

Projects have functioned just fine without elaborate governance structures. If a project is mature and the work is done, suddenly "improvers" appear, misquote Popper and write long texts about the elusive "community".

It starts innocent, but always ends badly like in the famous Orwell novel. Productive people move on to the next project or only produce proprietary software.

[jerf]

A repeated mistake I've seen related to that is the belief that communities create its members, despite the fact that members create communities. A lot of people think you can walk up to a community and use it like a tool to move people's opinions, beliefs, or values around, instead of the community being a reflection of shared opinions/beliefs/values.