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withdrawn from my attempt to get involved more deeply in MediaWiki's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