I suppose an in-between situation is the one where all the developers except for the no-longer-wanted originating dictator stage a revolt. If a project has a dev team of (say) 10, and 9 of them set up a fork and pointedly don't include the remaining one, then that fork may manage to have credibility in the eyes of the users even if the disinvited developer was the originator. Particularly if they've done anything publicly recognisable as a bad idea.
And then I suppose there's the "bloodless" version, in which the 9 other developers collectively present the dictator with an ultimatum: agree to a formal process in which your word is not necessarily the final word, or else we all make our own fork and don't invite you. If the dictator believes the threat is credible and would work, then they're going to lose their dictatorship anyway, so saying yes to this deal is in their interest, because it means they retain some influence over what the software does.
Either way, that's an identifiable point at which you switch from having 1 person in charge to having 9 people in charge, so it's a place where you can set up a thing looking like a governance.
no subject
I suppose an in-between situation is the one where all the developers except for the no-longer-wanted originating dictator stage a revolt. If a project has a dev team of (say) 10, and 9 of them set up a fork and pointedly don't include the remaining one, then that fork may manage to have credibility in the eyes of the users even if the disinvited developer was the originator. Particularly if they've done anything publicly recognisable as a bad idea.
And then I suppose there's the "bloodless" version, in which the 9 other developers collectively present the dictator with an ultimatum: agree to a formal process in which your word is not necessarily the final word, or else we all make our own fork and don't invite you. If the dictator believes the threat is credible and would work, then they're going to lose their dictatorship anyway, so saying yes to this deal is in their interest, because it means they retain some influence over what the software does.
Either way, that's an identifiable point at which you switch from having 1 person in charge to having 9 people in charge, so it's a place where you can set up a thing looking like a governance.