If a founder has a particular artistic vision that he feels passionate about, nothing is stopping him from forcing it through and then releasing the source code.
Except the fact that he'll receive virtually no contributions from the community and thus he'll be limited to whatever can be done by himself and his employees. Also, community-controlled distros have set themselves up as gatekeepers, so most users never even discover software that the distros don't like.
I think Shuttleworth has identified the correct problem: We know how to get a large number of programmers to produce high-quality software (employ them) and we know how to get a large number of programmers to produce a large amount of software for free (the bazaar), but we don't know how to convince a large number of programmers to produce high-quality software for free.
Except the fact that he'll receive virtually no contributions from the community and thus he'll be limited to whatever can be done by himself and his employees. Also, community-controlled distros have set themselves up as gatekeepers, so most users never even discover software that the distros don't like.
I think Shuttleworth has identified the correct problem: We know how to get a large number of programmers to produce high-quality software (employ them) and we know how to get a large number of programmers to produce a large amount of software for free (the bazaar), but we don't know how to convince a large number of programmers to produce high-quality software for free.