True that, and I am pretty sure that humble, modest and good-intentioned guys working on a project that attracts the biggest sharks in the business can certainly fight against trillion dollar assets of the latter with their bare scientific rigor and austerity to defend their work from any possible overtake.
I hope everyone else also shares this belief, this is how we create belief systems that outlive their subjects and may go on to float freely among platonic solids and spherical cows in vacuum, forever.
As much as I would like to argue against it, things do degrade over time. It is very much unknown how much Linus' passing will change linux ecosystem as a whole ( and one could argue some of his original vision was distorted already ). It is a king problem. Even if you find one good king among all men, what are the odds whoever follows will be at least as good? Usually not great.
And ethereum is very much new. While I personally think it will exist for a little longer, because there is now real money behind it, I think you are right on that generic point ( if I understood your argument correctly ).
It's apt that you bring up another leader, whose ostensible independence from big-money-driven agendas went up in smoke with his initial refusal, then embarrassed acceptance of the CoC that was peremptorily imposed on the Linux project.
I hope everyone else also shares this belief, this is how we create belief systems that outlive their subjects and may go on to float freely among platonic solids and spherical cows in vacuum, forever.