DHH: Let’s drop the unrealistic expectation of total transparency in open source

Absolutely. The only thing that demanding total transparency gets you is hidden private groups. Private conversations will happen one way or another. From the outsider's perspective, the important thing is to make it explicit that there is that level of communication outside the public sphere when conveying decisions that were legitimately made by the core contributors that aren't directly observable from the outside. The goal is the reasoning and thoughts can be shared as much as possible, but when that isn't possible just acknowledging it is important.

At least that was my takeaway from my experience almost 20 years ago in a popular open source project.

The point, or perhaps a corollary of the point here, is that famous people can't think in public because "every comment to every discussion is fair game for dissection, scrutiny, applause, or ridicule."

So you need to think privately so you're free to make mistakes, think poorly sometimes, be creative or whatever.