In reply to Scott.

You could get people to line around the block to help fix what's bad in WordPress. It's just that the core leadership and the project policies acts against this, making things semi-proprietary won't solve that.

Coincidentally, today a small business owner called me for help with his WordPress website. He needs his website redesigned asap. But even after two months, his website designer is still unable to finish it because of ongoing WordPress issues.
The most likely explanation is that the developer is not very good and it has nothing to do with WordPress. It could also be that the previous developer also weren't very good so the new developer have crap to work with but is afraid to say that.

WordPress developers etc are no doubt extremely important, but just like auto mechanics and CEOs, they don’t exist w/out the end users. Hope this info is helpful.
Both are needed but without devs giving their free time into WP and all the plugins and themes that the end users use WP would be nothing. If you don't cater to the developers also there is no future for WordPress. You have no end users without the developers.