It doesn’t have to mean kafkaesque, but it does mean governance through layered hierarchies and fixed procedures.

In 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.