You've misunderstood the relationship between contributors, and the GNU project. The community, nor contributor, is a deciding party when it comes to the maintaince of specific GNU projects. So a "community" cannot take any decisions when it comes to the decisions inside of a GNU project, it is fully up to the maintainer(s), with Chief GNUisance having a final say.
As a contributor you don't need to know how the internals of the GNU project function, but if you are interested you should read the GNU maintainer guidelines though, here is some relevant text: As a consequence, you cannot expect all contributors to support the GNU Project, or to have a concern for its policies and standards. So part of your job as maintainer is to exercise your authority on these points when they arise. No matter how much of the work other people do, you are in charge of what goes in the release. When a crucial point arises, you should calmly state your decision and stick to it. The GNU project clearly rejected the removal, as it happens sometimes, in this case there was some disagreement between maintainers, and a final decision was taken by Chief GNUisance.
