Third, and perhaps the best argument against OpenStack needing a leader, is the open nature of the beast itself. It’s precisely because there’s no dominant leader that OpenStack remains so transparent and competitive – everyone’s contributions can be seen by everyone else, and this drives people to do even better.

Most likely, those who say that OpenStack needs a leader do so because of history – previous open-source projects like Java, Linux and Android have all had a ‘dictator’ at the helm, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best path for OpenStack.

via OpenStack doesn’t need a leader, it just needs to evolve | SiliconANGLE.

If you remember correctly, Linux’s leadership and development model was largely dismissed by pundits, until it had 15 years of success under it’s belt. Then it became gospel of how Open Source projects should run.

But everything evolves over time. It doesn’t really surprise me that the pundits see OpenStack’s leadership model as different, and immediately dismiss it. We’ve got 3.5 years under our belt. Maybe at 5 or 6 everyone will now say all Open Source projects need to run like OpenStack.

Which would of course be wrong. While there are certain common threads between different Open Source communities, every community is different. Why? Because Communities are made of real people. Real people with different passions, strengths, weaknesses, biases, loves, constraints, and moments of brilliance. This isn’t something you can model with spheroid approximations of upstream developers. Replicating another project’s leadership model might be easy, but in most cases isn’t what your community actually needs.

Are there areas for improvement? Sure. There always are. But improvement is a watch word for OpenStack, something we apply everywhere: to code, to process, to communication.

So I agree, we don’t need a single leader. And the evolution that continues in OpenStack will be a key strength, not a weakness as the project goes forward.