The key word is “improvement”, which implies that there was something already there to improve.
So, a democratic structure can improve Django once it’s already well-defined and widely used. But could it have created Django and made it successful in the first place? I think the answer is no, and that’s what the gp meant by “non-incremental innovation”.
Most of these projects reached that stage before or early in the life of these companies. So by that logic the companies were not necessary to support the projects.
I think “bdfl” and “exclusive corporate sponsor” are 2 distinct issues. I was addressing “bdfl vs. democratic leadership”. I personally don’t think it matters where the bdfl is employed in the early days of a project, there are examples of wildly successful projects with and without an exclusive corporate sponsor.
Good point, they are probably indeed distinct. In some cases the BDFL is employed by the corporate sponsor (eg. Confluent) which makes it hard to separate the influence of each.
So, a democratic structure can improve Django once it’s already well-defined and widely used. But could it have created Django and made it successful in the first place? I think the answer is no, and that’s what the gp meant by “non-incremental innovation”.