Would you want someone who steps up and does a lot of work in a project you started to suddenly tell you that he/she will now change the vision of the project and turn it in ways you don’t like?
Let’s assume that you take your time to write clean code, do changes slowly and deliberately and think long about how to do something right before you start coding. Then someone steps up and does lots of cool things in a flurry of activity, but does not do them right and you already see the maintenance fallout from that approaching. Would you want that contributor to take over the project and use the name you established for this new kind of project?
As a non-programming example: I’m writing a roleplaying system, and it took me several years to get from EWS-2.6 to having the concepts for EWS-3.0 nailed down — though without having finished text. If someone came in and did lots of work, I would still not want to see an EWS-3.0 which violates core principles I set down for the system. People are free to do that, but they have to do that in their own space, not in the space I created.
Also changing the name all over the source code in the main version tracking repository is a pretty hostile step. It implies that the other one now considers the project his/her own.
Essentially Benno should have made a bano, but I think that just turning GNU nano into his own project isn’t OK.
I don't think Linus would object to someone replacing him if anyone was more qualified for the job. Hell he even openly encourages people to fork Linux, make improvements, and follow the license (copy left).
I see nothing wrong with the most active/best maintainer having say over the project's future.
No, not really. Open source embraces the idea of forking - a hostile take over of the original project is most definitely not the idea - but it can be allowed depending on the projects charter.
Also - most active contribute =/= maintainer - I'm sure Red Hat adds more code to the kernel than Linus these days, but Linus is still the 'decider'.
To conclude, Benno is free to fork GNU Nano, but it will not be GNU Nano - he can call it 'New Nano' if he likes.
Edit: That said, there seems to be more hostile takeovers happening these days. Perhaps because a new gen of devs care as much, or more, about brand as about code quality...
Changing name and leaving the old project eventually die or be subsumed by the fork (like egcs did with gcc) would have probably been a better choice.
There is no reason why the first sentence should imply the second.