What happens if Gavin and the other developers get hit by a truck? I know this is an open-source project, but what happens if the core contributors are gone? How will the community decide the future of the client?
If the entire core development team would be gone, a new team would need to take their place. I assume that the process might get political (some people wanting to push their agenda onto the project), and before the new devs would fully understand the system the innovation in the client might get stifled. It might also be likely that the Bitcoin Foundation would need to hire a few people to work on the project (just as they pay Gavin now). However, as there are already a lot of people that have contributed to the project, I don't think we couldn't handle the change in the long run.