As you probably understand main developers consolidate their position by doing this, assuring no one has any significant contribution towards the reference client, so we depend on them for whatever minor feature we need or want.
Paraipan, I agree with your concerns. And I want to say "thank you" for stepping up to voice them. I am also concerned about any trend towards needlessly re-writing or rejecting submitted patches for no reason other than consolidating copyright claims, which as many of us know is a common tactic used to close open source projects.
And I'd like to see useful features like coin control added as much as anyone.
BUT, the reference client is a lot like Linux in this respect: it needs to be stable and boring. The fun stuff really should happen elsewhere.
Also, that address filtering thing is concerning.
So let's all try to keep reminding ourselves that, for a market the size of Bitcoin,
"move slow" is the right answer.
But if you don't want to promote a more avant garde client like Armory or something, perhaps a plugin system could be developed? I'm not sure how feasible that is. Just throwing that out there as a possible solution.