I see where you're coming from, but I think your examples actually prove the opposite point.
I've always seen Linux and Git not as projects run by a committee, but as projects guided by a single, trusted leader. Linus Torvalds is the owner of the kernel's vision. He has the final say. That isn't community consensus; it's benevolent dictatorship.
So while the putty.org situation is shady, I believe the core idea is right: great software needs a final arbiter with a clear vision, not just a crowd.
In my 1,5 years of usage I haven't encountered any incidents of missing mails. As I understand it they rely on greylisting which makes it infeasible for spammers.
There have been e-mails that took around 5 minutes to show up in my inbox, but this was mostly with "low-traffic-domains" and only for the first e-mail. Subsequent e-mails have been delivered instantly.
And: it's a really nice not to have to check one's spam folder every day for falsely marked legitimate mails. I am very happy with the automatic system.
I can highly recommend https://mailbox.org/en/ . Based in Germany, complying to German data privacy laws. The smallest package is 1€/month with 2 GB storage for e-mails, 3 aliases, POP3/IMAP, calendar, address book, tasks.
There are also options for anonymous registration and payment.
They also have encryption built in: you can do PGP encryption in the webinterface. It also shows you whether there is working transport encryption (SMTP with TLS/STARTTLS) for each addressee.
This might sound like a marketing post but i am a highly satisfied customer and really like the service. I have catch-all addresses for +5 domains ("Office package") and everything works like a charm.
I've always seen Linux and Git not as projects run by a committee, but as projects guided by a single, trusted leader. Linus Torvalds is the owner of the kernel's vision. He has the final say. That isn't community consensus; it's benevolent dictatorship.
So while the putty.org situation is shady, I believe the core idea is right: great software needs a final arbiter with a clear vision, not just a crowd.