I don't have enough experience to directly contribute to the code base, so I can't really answer the question in regards to WP, but I will say that in my experience with non-code related group tasks, there is probably nothing worse than the decision making or lack thereof that occurs in heavily democratic committee like decision making structures.

The bottom line is that everyone has an opinion, but that doesn't mean they are all equal in terms of quality. This is even true of customer opinions. As much as you want to value that feedback and each voice, some opinions are simply just noise and your business will be hurt by acting on them. In fact, I know many entrepreneurs who swear that their pricing model is not tweaked enough (read high enough) until they get a certain percentage of complaints / gripes from users. So the feedback can be useful, but not necessarily for the reason one would think.

What's the old saying? A camel is a horse built by committee? Something like that.

The point is that is that if WP is not as responsive or open to direct community feedback (no clue if this is true), it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing (although I can see how it would frustrate folks) and in fact may be one of the distinguishing characteristics that have helped WP progress as successfully as it has....