Debian is an important open-source project that has had codified democratic governance for over quarter of a century now: https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

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JoshTriplett 7 hours ago | parent [-]

One property Debian has, which most projects don't have, is a very clearly established electorate to enfranchise.

A few projects have a clear set of members. Most projects don't; they have contributors of code/documentation/triage/community/etc, but no clear delineation of who is or should be an enfranchised member of the project. Often, projects don't end up defining this until they need it as part of establishing some preferred form of governance.

	▲	hobofan 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> A few projects have a clear set of members. Exactly. I'm not too versed in political theory, but one thing from my perception that provides coherence/continuity in nations is the immobility of participants (for better or worse of the individual). E.g. if you have 70/30 election outcome you still have to factor in the needs of the 30% as they may provide important economic functions and can't just leave on election loss. In contrast, in an open source project, even if you can clearly delineate membership and based on that voting rights for a democratic process there is very little preventing the "losers" from forking (it almost entirely comes down to brand). The outcome of that would just be an empty brand shell with a good chunk of their contribution activity gone.