I read the entire article carefully, thinking about various other schisms in the Open Source World (Net/OpenBDS being the one that came to my mind first) - and reflected on how important leadership is in many of those communities. For better or worse, the (in most cases) benevolent dictatorship of people like Theo (OpenBSD), Linus (Linux), and Guido (Python) play an important role in herding their respective cats.
It might be interesting to see how effective (if such a thing could even be measured) communities with benevolent dictators perform as compared to those that operate by consensus/voting.
It's interesting that you mention Theo, since apparently the reason OpenBSD exists is because he couldn't get along with the other core NetBSD developers.
What it shows is that the characteristic of being a good "benevolent dictator" isn't the same as "getting along" with your peers. Theo was a poor collaborator in a larger project. Linus probably would be too.
For some value of significant, Squeak. The turn out has been down for the last few elections, with the last one getting around a hundred votes, with around 450 people authorized to vote.
It might be interesting to see how effective (if such a thing could even be measured) communities with benevolent dictators perform as compared to those that operate by consensus/voting.