> Are there other projects with numerous corporate contributors, then, which were threatened or destroyed by poor patches? My perception is that Postgres has a large number of corporate contributors, but they don't seem to be hurting for it.
There's definitely sometimes strains showing. Corporations have often interest in getting specific features in, but don't care that much about maintaining the codebase and/or maintainability.
Definitely causes some strife. I think we most of the time keep it civil enough.
This justification (i.e., that Linux has to be this way, because it's in a unique position) sounds strange to me. If we're claiming that the relevant sample size is N=1, isn't that equivalent to saying that it's impossible to study whether this management style is necessary or not?
In fact, this argument seems almost backwards to me. Linux can be run this way because it is successful. Nvidia isn't trying to mess up NetBSD's architecture, precisely because NetBSD is not as popular with users.