Rich has a fairly strict development approach and wants to personally review and approve all changes to the core. There are complaints about that process, and that's fair. But as far as I have seen, most large, successful projects have similar personalities leading them (Stallman, Linus, Larry Wall, Guido...).
Finally, I should add -- if what you are looking for is software freedom... then you should absolutely consider using a Lisp like clojure. Lisp's give you the power to control your language through macros and non-core libraries. Unlike other languages, you do not need a core development team to make language changes for you. Perhaps this is why clojure is so powerful... because the core process issues you have heard about are not actually that important, and in fact the language itself enables substantially more software freedom than perhaps you are giving it credit for.
Rich has a fairly strict development approach and wants to personally review and approve all changes to the core. There are complaints about that process, and that's fair. But as far as I have seen, most large, successful projects have similar personalities leading them (Stallman, Linus, Larry Wall, Guido...).
Finally, I should add -- if what you are looking for is software freedom... then you should absolutely consider using a Lisp like clojure. Lisp's give you the power to control your language through macros and non-core libraries. Unlike other languages, you do not need a core development team to make language changes for you. Perhaps this is why clojure is so powerful... because the core process issues you have heard about are not actually that important, and in fact the language itself enables substantially more software freedom than perhaps you are giving it credit for.