Comment by tete

I don't know, there's quite a few open source projects where the original author stepped down and it's thriving. Take Arch Linux for example. Before that Gentoo - and there I think the main "problem" with popularity is that self-compiling fell out of fashion.

There's also tons of software projects where this happened, just more quietly. Usually when there is no drama, nobody reports about it. So I'd assume it's usually more a problem, if there is drama, but even here I can think about projects surviving despite it. See OwnCloud/NextCloud.

Honestly, I can't think of projects where this did not end well. Given that SerentyOS is still a thing, despite Kling pulling out a while ago (in the sense of only working on the browser) it really doesn't sound like the project is on its last breath now.

Given the history of getting people into OS development - even more so than Haiku, which also did a pretty good job at that I think Kling leaves with a multitude of people stepping in.