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What about *BSD ? How are they managing their kernels and other important decisions?

I know next to nothing about the BSD communities, my only interaction with the BSD is discussing the taste of a pizza Theo de Raadt and I shared about 20 years ago and young me had no idea who he was. I later heard he is at the helm of OpenBSD and is used to strongly defend his opinions but it is only hearsay.

I have no idea how FreeBSD or OpenBSD communities are organized but I suspect they might not be relying on one specific individual for their major decisions?



As for NetBSD, there's hundreds of people with commit access and a small group of respected developers to resolve disputes, with some extra democracy / laws restricting it. FreeBSD is similar but I never bothered to check the details.

I think we generate less hackernews-worthy drama posts overall because when someone is repeatedly abusive, they're asked privately to stop/apologize, and if they keep at it, they risk being kicked from the project.

With hundreds of contributors and a weak hierarchy, no one person is too important to be kicked.




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