The scale of the project management involved would be tied to it, and that would take project buy in from the OpenSSL leadership far beyond anything I'd expect them to take, and also a much stricter leadership to keep things conformant to those higher standards. The current code base is mind bogglingly, shockingly bad, and the current leaders let that happen. Given Theo's leadership style on top of that I could only imagine a fork as even possible, he's slagged on the OpenSSL team already (justifiably).
I'd rather see a fork, honestly, to see more competent and disciplined standards and leadership, though that's a personal opinion. If the current project leaders stepped down and handed it off to people actually able to handle such an important software project, that'd be great, but I can't imagine it based on their past behavior.
Sure, I agree that it affects level of buy-in required, and that higher levels of buy-in are less likely. I don't think that it's clearly the dominant factor though - particularly in the face of an event like this, high levels of buy-in may very well be attainable. Maybe not, of course, but that would have more to do with intransigence on the part of the team - which would itself be the reason for the fork.
I'd rather see a fork, honestly, to see more competent and disciplined standards and leadership, though that's a personal opinion. If the current project leaders stepped down and handed it off to people actually able to handle such an important software project, that'd be great, but I can't imagine it based on their past behavior.