Not all people like Fred will act as you describe. When I was at Google, Michael Chastain (I think he is/was a GDB maintainer) did lots of massive refactorings across the whole Google codebase, and was one of the hand full of people with ownership rights at the root of the source tree. He really was a major force multiplier.
I don't know Michael Chastain, but I know people who fit your description, and, unlike the generic Fred of the article, they are not slow to deliver useful software - quite the opposite, in fact.
