Ulrich Drepper is a brilliant programmer and an expert on his field, but he cannot work with people. I figure that the former is the only reason why he's still around.
He is employed by RedHat, so they're implicitly making the decision his working style is worth it.
But this is an example of open source at work -- people forked GLIBC due to, in part, dissatisfaction with Depper's (or Redhat's) working style and priorities.