"What if Guido <i>were</i> hit by a bus." Pedantry aside, I think the question of scripting language leadership is interesting. Tcl has survived Ousterhout's stepping aside, but I think it's arguable that it failed to thrive for a while afterwards, although it's impossible to know how things might have gone had he stayed. I think some projects <i>are</i> better off with a benevolent dictator type figure; others (most of the Apache projects, for instance), don't really have that type of person.
Python has a large community and the culture of that community has a lot of cohesion around the Python philosophy. DHH once commented (in the Snakes and Rubies event with Adrian of the Django bunch - <a href="http://www.djangoproject.com/snakesandrubies/" rel="nofollow">http://www.djangoproject.com/snakesandrubies/</a> Q&A part) that it's in the early days that culture/style/direction needs to be defined. After a while, the people who are a part of the project are those that like that style.<p>There's lots of people in the Python community today and they're in it not to redefine Python, but because they like what Python is. Sure, there will always be differences of opinion, but overall the people involved with Python are because they like it and want to see it thrive.
discusion is about if guido died, or how to make python less risky to business managers:
* create a (permissive?) standard? always out of date, slow, not slow
* create organization that provides support