I don't think Lemmy would die even if Spez gets fired and they write a public apology for the users inconvenience and step back with the API changes....
Honestly even if they fired Huffman, reversed all his bad decisions, and even went open source again it would still never be the same. They would never be able to fix the damage that they've done.
That's what happens when you stab your users in the back like this.
Yeah, it's not as though the third party app devs would suddenly all be like "oh thank god we can keep working with this company". The bridges are burned.
Also the person developing Reddit's mod Toolbox is quitting [source]. That'll be a huge blow to the ability for Reddit mods to moderate subreddits. Yep they really couldn't fix this even if they wanted to (they don't, they think we're too stupid and that we'll still keep using Reddit even after every sub is full of spam and "upvote if you agree" posts).