It doesn’t have to mean kafkaesque, but it does mean governance through layered hierarchies and fixed procedures.
replyIn this case a single committee directly engaged with both core developers and the community, through a fairly open process, explicitly bent several of their own official rules to suit the occasion, and indicated cases where further flexibility might be needed depending on how things develop.
I would call that a pretty stellar example of non-bureaucratic governance.
Fair enough. I was reacting more to the "organizational hell" part and didn't focus as much on the "layers" part.
replyI have a hard time seeing it as organizational hell, either? From the outside, it looks like the process went smoothly and reached a decision in about half the time they originally estimated.
replyIt’s true that that decision didn’t involve everybody getting their way. But that’s not organizational hell, that’s just organization. If you don’t want to contend with other people’s competing interests, the solution to that is solo development.