[iamnothere]

You can say all these things, and yet my experience with BDFLs in reality has been the opposite. More often, they make good decisions that continue their vision for the project, rather than abruptly redirecting the project. This is because productive people are often relatively consistent in their vision and direction.

Small community “democracy” OTOH often devolves into ochlocracy, or reactive mob rule. Small communities are easily swayed, don’t often have a durable vision, and can easily be infiltrated by people who don’t have the best interest of the project (or the users) at heart.

The only thing that can offset these effects is a heavy process, like Debian has, which slows down the mob and forces everyone to consider all sides of the issue. This can actually work! And for some projects it’s a better fit than a BDFL.