Open Source patch-work

Interresting article on what business can be built with Open Source Softwares, what can (should) be opened and what shouldn't. It also talks about general OSS marketing and project life (and death sometimes). But IMO it's missing an important part : design choices. You can't have a software work if A decides one day to commit code that will make it work in a way and B want to do it the other way. At least if they work on expanding the same software (ie collaboration, not fork). There needs to be an authority to decide. It also shows how OSS usually have no pre-established design (what we tried to avoid in matroska and got everybody surprised). This is usually a bunch of patches around an original design that was probably not meant for many twists in the way it works. IMO a good software (OSS or not) has to be designed and choices have to be made in advance. And this very simple aspect that is missing in the article cast a different perspective of what can be achieved with the OSS, only in an utopian (and purely anarchic) world. Successful OSS projects actually have an authority to decide choices.