Didn't Ballmer do a cost-benefit study on this in '07 only to determine that if you struck Linus down then he would become more powerful than anyone could imagine?
Oh yes, I remember that white paper. The conclusion was that if Linus became a Force ghost, he would be able to code 24/7, which would affect the market share of Windows Server 2008.
If true, would that still hold now? There is so much politics and polarization and agendas - I'm not aware in Linux specifically but in tech and open source generally. Without benevolent dictators I think a lot of projects would fragment very badly and leave big openings for companies like Microsoft. I think we're going to see that as a failure mode in big open source projects more and more.