Regarding their origins and updates. Does one person come up with an idea that they think would benefit the program, and a community decides if it’s really a good update?
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Yea but there are a few nuances.
Usually one person starts the project. As the creator they usually are the ones writing most of the code, few open source projects actually become big enough where there’s a “community” regularly contributing.
However the original creator of the program generally has final say over whether changes make it into the code base or not, this is because they control the code base for it. Of course someone could make their own copy and do what they want with it, but both users and “the community” usually don’t move from the original code base unless leadership is very very poor.
If projects get big enough, they assign trusted people to approve changes, if the project gets even bigger they might lay out proper rules and a governing organization for the project, although usually the original creator is still allowed de facto final say (we jokingly call this role “Benevolent Dictator for Life,” BDFL).
In other words the community doesn’t have a say really, they are at the mercy of the creator, and usually this doesn’t really cause too many problems. “The community” does have a final ultimate veto though, to take the code and start working on their own version without the creator. In practice this rarely happens though.
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