I still think Pieter Hintjens was right about many of the essentials of FOSS.

Things like trying to focus on production as much as possible. To merge patches as fast as possible and to give people a stake in the project as soon as possible by giving them commit rights or merging their patches promptly even if they are not technically perfect. Also to avoid lengthy mailing list discussions which turn into rival factions and flame wars.

In Culture and Empire he contrasts the cult with the idealized open source project.

In a cult there is a single controlling mind and ideological purity is ruthlessly enforced.

In the idealized open source project there are many independent minds with no single one dominating. There is not necessarily any single ideology other than a minimum consensus over copyright and the chosen method of interaction via chat or mailing lists or irc, etc. In this arrangement a wisdom of the crowd can emerge which is greater than any individual mind, whereas the cult can only be as smart as its single controlling mind.