I was recently reading http://www.kde.org/announcements/gfresponse.php and it got me thinking about that infamous article by ESR the cathederal and the bazaar (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/).

In recent years many FOSS projects have democratised into 'foundations' and this raises various questions. Firstly it says in the kde link 'In a sense, we are the only large "pure" Bazaar-style project out there... and it works.' what does this mean in comparison to the rule by committee approach taken by the FOSS foundations (mozilla, gnome).

My second question is, does democratic committees increase internal politics and if so what impact does this have?

I think it is important to distinguish between the foundations: Mozilla and Gnome have paid executives. Apache and KDE do not.

The purpose of setting up the Apache and KDE Foundations was to create a legal entity with whom organisations could relate.

I am not aware of any foundations that are democratic in any meaningful sense; normally the Trustees of a charitable foundation have a duty to manage the foundation lawfully. The only time when a 'democratic' decision can be taken is at the Annual General Meeting when the Trustees can be sacked.

The foundations may be widening the scope of people with whom they consult and they may, as KDE has done, grant powers to groups of people to manage projects as they see fit but there is no requirement for them to do that in a democratic way, only in a lawful way.

Even if foundations set up committees, my understanding is that the responsibility for the decisions legally lies with the Trustees who are simply trusting people to make lawful decisions. Decisions not taken by the Trustees or a sub-committee appointed by the Trustees have no legal standing unless explicitly approved by the Trustees.

In other words, foundations cannot be meaningful democracies and the sensible ones avoid becoming bureaucracies - a sure way to stifle the creativity they were set up to promote.