The Care and Feeding of Dictators

Gruber nails it:

I posit that the usability and elegance of any product, software or hardware, tends to reach and seldom surpasses the level that satisfies the taste of whoever is in charge of the product. The people in charge of most free and open source software products tend to have poor taste in user interfaces; people with good taste in user interface design are seldom in charge of open source software projects.

Put another way, if you have to ask for better design, you will lose. You need to be in a position to demand it.

I never thought I’d ever hear myself saying this, but sometimes you need dictatorships. Never in government, of course. But often in software. There are some problems that demand a single, guiding hand — one preeminent ego that’s both the progenitor and the keeper of a vision. Because visions tend to become fractured and diffuse when they’re subjected to committee.

The trick is in choosing the right dictator; and in retaining the personnel, and the intelligence, and the power, to depose him when he goes off the rails. As he inevitably will.