I know none of the details of the Catalyst project--I'm not even sure I know what it is exactly--and none of the details of the problems.

I do know that every team needs a leader. Every idea a progenitor. If you don't like the idea, you don't join the team. If you disagree with the leader and their ideas, you don't gang up to remove the leader, you go off and follow your own notions.

I'm an inveterate non-joiner for exactly those reasons. I'd rather influence (or not), through reason from the outside, than inveigle my way onto a project and then stage a coup--bloodless or otherwise.

I'm also an inveterate private projecteer, because I prefer to follow my own ideas to fruition or failure. It takes longer and may never complete, but it's a lot less frustrating than having to justify your decisions to other, johnny-come-latelys.

Very few technical debates have clear cut black & white answers. They nearly always involve trade-offs and priorities and value-judgements about those. In a volunteer project, IMO, the progenitor gets the casting vote--even against the numerical weight of opinion. Those who cannot live with the progenitors decision have the option of forking the project or starting their own.

In the commercial environment, you do what the man-who-pays, tells you to do.

In a volunteer project, you do it for your own reasons, your own motives and your own passions. Once a project ceases to be something you look forward to doing, and becomes something you start avoiding, you best drop it and move on. The quickest way for a passion to become a burden, is for you to loose heart in it's direction. And the quickest way for that to happen when you are the progenitor of a project, is when you loose control of the direction and goals of your ideas and efforts.

Does any of this relate to the Catalyst project? I have no idea.