I think democracy is almost the worst way to take decisions when it comes to scientific/engineering things. In an open source project, a single expert should be able to overrule the mass of users/contributors if his point is technically more correct. This is very difficult to consistently achieve in a democracy.
I would love to see the results/conclusion of this research. We would finally get some data-backed insight into why/why not democracy is good for a software project.
I would love to see the results/conclusion of this research. We would finally get some data-backed insight into why/why not democracy is good for a software project.