You can support an approach and also believe someone is doing it stupidly, or even unethically, all without being contradictory.
For example, do you support the right of a newspaper editor to pick and choose which letters to the editor get published? How about a restaurant's reserved "right to refuse service to anyone"? If you do, you still reserve the right in each of these cases to object to individual decisions, and to refuse patronage if an individual decision or a pattern of decisions offends you. All without contradicting yourself.
But that's exactly the problem with the benevolent dictatorship model. Sooner or later this kind of absolute power is used unwisely or outright abused and you have no recourse.
This is why almost every country in the world has abandoned monarchy. It's ultimately too error-prone and inefficient.
Once upon a time (a few years ago), King Linus and his nobles weren't terribly happy with many of the technical decisions the Android team made. How did King Linus exercise his sovereignty? Did it stop the Android team from doing what they wanted?
You're missing the point. Linux would never have gotten to the point of being useful for Android if Linus Torvalds didn't have a benevolent dictatorship.
Anyway, if you are truly for freedom, support Apple's freedom to do things its way and Google's to do things its way. You can follow whichever one you want. Or did you want to dictate to me and millions of others that they can't choose a walled-garden such as Apple's if that's what we want?
You want to shove your preferred freedom down our throats?
You want to shove your preferred freedom down our throats?
Not at all. Make yourself right at home in your cozy walled garden. Just stop using bogus patent suits to drive the products I want to buy off the shelves and compete on features instead.
My point is that whatever you want to call the governance model of Linux it isn't anything like a (non-joking) dictatorship. A real dictator could and would have stopped the Android team from leaving (i.e. made them do things his way or not at all). Linus not only didn't stop them from leaving, he couldn't.
When the benevolence is built-in, it isn't a dictatorship, it's something else. And something else doesn't support your argument about walled gardens, it undermines it.
With an Android phone I can limit myself to what's available on Google Play or I can patronize any of the third-party app markets or I can manually side-load any app I want. If I don't like a particular vendor's form factor or UI customizations I have many alternatives. Those of us unafraid of a little variety call this choice, not anarchy.
And in a world where a lot of people access the internet only through a phone these decisions carry a lot more weight than your choice of shoes or your car.
For example, do you support the right of a newspaper editor to pick and choose which letters to the editor get published? How about a restaurant's reserved "right to refuse service to anyone"? If you do, you still reserve the right in each of these cases to object to individual decisions, and to refuse patronage if an individual decision or a pattern of decisions offends you. All without contradicting yourself.