How Decisions Are Made
The GNU Binutils project is part of the GNU Toolchain (gcc, binutils, glibc, gdb) which itself is part of the larger GNU Project.
The highest level Binutils policy decisions are made by the GNU Binutils Chief Maintainers who are appointed by the Administrators of the GNU Project. They are accountable to the GNU Project for the looking after the package including adhering to GNU Project policies.
The chief maintainers delegate a lot of the development of the project to volunteers and contributors. Contributors can also become subject specific maintainers, looking after a specific architecture or feature of the Binutils project. Chief maintainers and subject maintainers can make any decisions they wish regarding their area of governance but in general the community is consulted on all major decisions before they are implemented.
The chief maintainers also act as a kind of the buck stops here placement, providing decisions and conflict resolution for anyone who asks.
The chief maintainers are also responsible for handling any administration tasks for the project that might arise.
The GNU Binutils project has its own Code of Conduct and a committee to handle problems that might arise. This committee may seek advice and/or assistance from the Chief Maintainers but their actions and decisions are separate and not controlled by them.
In the spirit of free and open source software anyone is free to disagree with the decisions made by the project maintainers and to create their own fork where they can do what they wish. However this mus be done within reason as the sources are still covered by licenses and changing those licenses without conscent of the current license holders would not be a good idea.
The Chief Maintainers are appointed by the Administrators of the GNU Project. Usually based upon the recommendation of previous Chief Maintainers. There is also a process in place for maintainers who want to step down.
The current Chief Maintainers are Alan Modra and Nick Clifton.