Drupal is a fairly popular CMS. As for what this means for the project, nothing good, but probably nothing serious either. They've lost of of their major contributors, and they've gained a lot of bad press, but it's still a huge project with a major corporate backer. The long run trajectory probably hasn't changed too much.

(Note: Drupal is essentially controlled by Acquia, and it was Acquia's CTO who decided to purge Garfield.)