But it's a different kind of gatekeeping to the increasingly exploitative and user-hostile world of commercial closed-source software. Perhaps "leaders" in a very literal sense would be a more apt term than "gatekeepers".
That's one way that the FOSS model will always have a built-in advantage: if anyone steering the ship tries to throw the users overboard then someone else can always fork the project as a last resort. This has actually happened in a few significant cases and is always there as a warning sign to anyone thinking of steering a new course for the wrong reasons.
I believe the same thing everyone else does about the superiority of open-source software development. I just don't think this article is a good explanation of where that superiority comes from. In large part, the importance of Linux's code being open is that it makes it safer for large corporations (Intel, Google) to invest time in it; that has nothing to do with a bazaar ethic!
I've come around to thinking of corporate open source as a way companies can partition what they want to compete vs collaborate on. This is sort of a variation on the commoditize your complement strategy. Most of business is not zero sum, so I don't think it's particularly surprising competitors do agree on sharing the cost of maintaining infrastructure that isn't their moat or basis of market share.
That's one way that the FOSS model will always have a built-in advantage: if anyone steering the ship tries to throw the users overboard then someone else can always fork the project as a last resort. This has actually happened in a few significant cases and is always there as a warning sign to anyone thinking of steering a new course for the wrong reasons.