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D has been Open Source since the Gnu and LVM compilers came out, maybe 15 years ago. The dmd backend was converted to full Open Source several years ago. So now all 3 D compilers are fully open source.

Full open source is what allows others to fork it without any licensing issues.

D is completely opensource already (https://github.com/dlang/dmd). The "open" of OpenD is just ADR saying that OpenD will be more open to new language features than D has historically been.

which just means a different person is guiding the project

It’s about the policies and the culture that the leadership evokes, just like the leader of a country. It does matter who is in charge.

Sure. But the existing option is the inventors who started the project from nothing and have committed decades of their life.

Just like politics like you said, outsiders often think it's easy to come in and fix everything.

Dividing the community makes sense if things are going off the deep end or no longer being supported. It doesn't make sense in hopes of getting a slightly more efficient approval process.

It is open source. Open source doesn't mean that arbitrary pull requests are welcome, see SQLite or Lua for other examples.

That's fair and thanks for the elucidation on the topic