Thanks you Aryeh for your excellent comment (Score: 5, Insightful).
I fully agree that excluding volunteer coders from decision making processes is a dangerous path, which in the long run could cost WMF more than the time spent on including the community in a collaborative and open way.
As an occasional volunteer coder (most of my contributions to Wikimedia are on other projects), my focus is less on lack of involvement in decision making (even though I can fully understand that being an issue for more experienced volunteer coders). A lot frustration emerges from the huge code review lag, which has been a known problem for a long time and I don't see any improvement despite the large amount of hiring WMF has conducted. I for one have mostly withdrawn from my attempt to get involved more deeply in MediaWiki's development.
-- Tobias