Regardless of the Capital P controversy, I think Matt's comment rings true to my own experience.

When you have a largely democratic process for development, any significant changes are ALWAYS met with a huge backlash from some percentage of the populace (see flyout menus). In a private company, decisions can be made by a single leader that can be dramatically different than the original intent of the software.

It may well be that "benevolent monarchy" is the way of the future with open source - see Ruby on Rails as a good example of this in action. A core team led by DHH makes controversial decisions seemingly with every release. It's not a democracy on major decisions, but perhaps that's why it's so successful? I tend to think so.