Agreed. If something happened, Greg would certainly take-over at least temporarily. Then the LKML would fight over succession like they fight over everything else. It would take too long, it would be dysfunctional, at least one person would quit the project but they would settle on a perfectly workable solution in the end. And it would evolve from there.

There is a whole hierarchy of ownership in the kernel. It is not entirely explicit. It can be quite fluid. It is not as dire as the article states.