Kicking out stupid people may be all good and dandy, but I'm very wary of the people who are harsh proponents of the kicking, whom they represent, and what they stand for.

Oh, and what/whom they suggest the "stupid" leader X should be replaced with. Usually their thinking doesn't go that far.

The usual pattern I see is: employees at large corporations attacking people who don't have a big corporate affiliation. This may not mean much, but it makes me start thinking about this big picture.

And then, I haven't yet seen an open source project where the long-time leader went away because of burnout of some kind or was kicked out, and it started growing, prospering, and kicking ass in general (Python doesn't count, since Guido never really went away). I've seen stagnation at best, and disuse, lack of maintenance, and a fall into obscurity in the vast majority of cases. In other words, there is not enough laissez-faire in "the community" at large to keep the tragedy of commons at bay.

That's interesting because on this forum I have seen quite a lot of the exact opposite: employees at startups attacking big corporation employees, seemingly because they (incorrectly) perceive them as their competitors. In fact any time Facebook, Google, Amazon or Microsoft seems to get brought up here in an article there is a barrage of negative comments and airing of grievances out of the blue. Honestly to me this is all just shades of the same open source drama, it really doesn't matter in the end who stands for what or represents what. Some people just won't get along and that's what the community has to deal with. When it's a prominent founder causing issues, then it becomes a problem for everyone.

But let's not conflate a value judgement with a prediction: When it happens all at once it says that there's either something wrong with the zeitgeist or something wrong with the leadership, or something anyways which is a leading indicator of the end.