when you look at core being the defacto reference client and all other brands are REKT and treated as things that should fork to an altcoin if they want to propose a network protocol change, to see who follows. you soon learn how difficult it is for a non core sponsored dev to get core to veer away from their sponsored roadmap and actually allow a change that benefits actual bitcoiner that want actual bitcoin utility.

achowe as been a big implementer of moderation, in IRC, mailing list, githb and this forum... he has set job titles of different modules of core to specific paid devs, where by they control, self review and self "force-push" their own code. meaning its not open to anyone to join and take part in but instead managed by certain sponsored devs.

trying to convince these managers to go against their own plans is a endless fight with no resolution and usually ends up with commenters on the github being banned for even Nacking a feature that can cause problems for the community. whilst the feature that causes problems gets "forced pushed" into release candidates/masters by the manager with merge privileges.. self pushing their own code un-reviewed by others.

as you admit unless you have kissed the ring and shown loyalty to their roadmap and sucked enough eggs to get recognition they will add your code if it aids their roadmap. but wont add it if it goes against their roadmap