Some have suggested giving subsystem maintainers commit access. I am not sure that's a good idea, given Drupal's current architecture. ... Looking at the macro level and planning things out to ensure consistency and so forth is very important. It also has a name, which is even dirtier to mention around here than "backward compatibility" but I shall do so anyway: A roadmap.
FWIW, it mostly agree with Larry's points. But anyway. You all lost me here. I'm already considering whether the issue I face is really my own, personal issue only. I consider myself a contrib developer, reviewing and providing "upstream" patches for core occasionally. I have to stop doing that, because I still have to rewrite contrib modules for new API features in D6 and to improve them in general. These are the applications I (and the users of my modules) build Drupal sites with. My time is limited (I have a life as well), so I have to stop caring about D7/HEAD. Regarding better WYSIWYG support in Drupal, someone else has to take over the left side of the roadmap: http://groups.drupal.org/node/6492/summary Hopefully, the stuff that ends up in core will be compatible and useful for Wysiwyg API in D7 in the end. The same applies to some other modules. Especially regarding UX and Drupal's administrative interface, I've lost track and hope anyway already. I can only hope that one will be able to disable any oh-so-nifty-UX-widgets that may be added in D7. Thanks to Karoly for bringing up this discussion. sun