The protocol specifies flawless security (except quantum computing vulnerability). WHY on earth has this flawless security be ruined by eager developers adding features that are not essential to bitcoin protocol?
Right, in principle, wallet functionality isn't needed at all to maintain the Bitcoin P2P network, the reason for Bitcoin Core's existence.
This is why --disable-wallet mode was introduced in 0.9.0. It allows you to build without the wallet, which removes quite a few dependencies (OpenSSL however is still required as we also use it for ECDSA at this point, and for RPC SSL support, but this could change after merging sipa's ECDSA library).
In the long run there are two options: either we remove the wallet, or we keep it and try to keep up with features of other wallets. Keeping up includes the payment protocol. If payment protocol was
not supported people would be complaining about lack of support for the new merchant integration methods.
With the rename to "Bitcoin
Core", you would think it would be just that, the CORE p2p network/functionality.
IMO the foundation has no business competing with other clients and features, be responsible for the core, let others build on it.
At the very least separate out all "features" that are not required by the core as a separate application.