He mentioned in the article that Kubernetes didn’t have a Linus Tovalds to oversee the project. I found a similar thing to be true with git, as often scaling isn’t so much a technical challenge at first, rather it’s a bunch of org challenges that manifest themselves in technical ways.

The model of the “benevolent dictator” kinda works in this case. My last project I was on we managed to scale to about 50k LOC without anything special, the key is I knew the repo like the back of my hand and could catch potential integration issues. While the model works well, it’s very hard to setup as you need a real nerd of a team lead to constantly watch the repo.

I don’t see why a project should strive for a lack of leadership

Most things in life that don’t have leadership become messy and disorganized and eventually disintegrate into an unstable hell with no real focus