Why in the world would anyone believe that we should air our disagreements in public. Would you like it if your boss at work took out a full page ad in USAToday stating how your work was not up to their standards or that because of financial considerations you were going to be let go? I don't know of any company that would do this, or any employee who would appreciate it.
Of all the people who used to be on the core, do you know what, if anything they contributed? Was it just answering questions in the forums? Was it attending chats? Was it working on code or skins? Was it documentation? Do you know how they responded to requests for assistance with coding or documentation or a dozen other tasks? Do you know how they interact with other team members? Do you know why they were invited to join the core team? Do you know what their job was on the core team? Do you now anything at all about these people other than some forum posts and a blog or two? If you don't know all these things, then what makes you think that you are in any way qualified to judge whether they are good for the project or not. There are only a handful of people in the world who can answer these questions to any meaningful degree, and generally speaking that does not include anyone who is not on the core team interacting with these people every day.
Do you think that Microsoft should have a shareholder vote every time they decide to ask someone to leave? Surely the Shareholders have more of a right to know what is happening than someone who's sole relation to Microsoft is that they happen to use Microsoft Office. I have given lots of input to Microsoft over the years about problems with their products or ways that they could improve their products. I have even paid money for some of their products. Clearly they are where they are at in part because of my effort and everyone else who has ever used/purchased their products and given them feedback. Maybe we should all have a say in who should stay at Microsoft and who should go. And we should have long drawn out discussions about every cross word that was ever said about or by these same employees. Dang it. I want to hear about the time that Bill Gates yelled at that person and told him/her that their idea was stupid. As a shareholder/customer/end-user I have RIGHTS and I demand to be consulted for every hiring/firing at Microsoft.
OK. Now lets come back to the real world. In the real world people are fired/laid off/let go/asked to resign all the time. The company does not make a big public stink about the process. Most good companies even try to give the employee an oportunity to leave with no negative consequences in regards to their professional careers and if asked by a future company inquiring about the employee, will even give them a good recomendation. In all my years of management I have never trashed a former employee who didn't work out, and most of the time, if asked, I will give them a good recommendation for future employers. Is that because I am being dishonest? No. It is because I recognize that most of the time, people are asked to leave an organization because they were no longer a good fit for the job. Either they did not get along with others in the organization or they were the wrong person for the job for which they were hired or the organization just no longer needed their skills or they just didn't believe in managements vision for the organization. There are many possible reasons and often it is not black/white as to who was in the wrong. Maybe the person didn't complete their tasks because the tasks were ill-defined, or maybe they didn't get along with people because the organization is filled with a bunch of idiots and asses, maybe they sucked at their job because the hiring manager did a lousy job of interviewing and placed someone in a job that they were not qualified for. So, instead of trashing peoples reputation, I give those former co-workers/employees the benefit of the doubt and talk about their good qualities. What skills they possessed, what their work demeanor was like, how they benefited our organization etc. In some cases I have even hired these former employees back when I thought that they might be a better fit for another part of the organization.
In short, there is no reason to ask the community about who should be asked to step down because the community is not and never will be privy to everything that happens on the project. Just like I will never know what happens behind closed-doors at Microsoft. In addition, it would be unfair of me to negatively characterize someones performance on the project because it might just be the result of poor managment on my part rather than poor performance on theirs. So in light of all that, the management team for the project makes the best decision they can about what will be the best for the project, knowing that this will best serve the community's interests. If occassionally we get it wrong, then that is life. We are all human after all.