People are free to leave a community they feel unwelcome in.

If it's an open source software project, they are also free to fork the software and make their own project around it. While, obviously, two parallel projects divided by interpersonal issues isn't ideal and likely duplicates efforts, it's better than losing the work of either of the factions, so, given the existence of the social issues, it's quite possibly the best acheivable outcome.

Precisely.

I'm just wondering what would've happened if Rod was forced to resign and the other <50% voters who voted against it. Maybe a fork of NodeJS, but this time from Rod's fellows?