To me it helps to think of it like debt, if they get a lot of money (or contributors or whatever) and lose users in the process then that can be re-invested to acquire more users at a later date. The GNOME forks I have seen don't really have a lot of developers, same thing with the KDE/Qt forks.
I don't really have any other comments on "ego guys", every maintainer has their own style. I have seen leadership with a strong vision work for some projects but not work for others.
I don't really have any other comments on "ego guys", every maintainer has their own style. I have seen leadership with a strong vision work for some projects but not work for others.