You're right, founder effect wears off in terms of consensus-free authority, and it should. Founder effects in code style and culture last practically forever, in my experience. But with Mitchell pulling $3M/year, the top job needs leadership and consensus around what to do to save Mozilla, not resting on laurels from a couple of decades ago. (BTW Mitchell was not on founding staff @ mozilla dot org; she was on Netscape's legal team and wrote the NPL and MPL.)