Dissatisfaction n. 3 is the essence of the problem: "Because Clojure is a language and other people's jobs and lives depend on it, the project no longer feels like someone's personal project which invites a more democratic contribution process". This is a common, and modern, feeling that the more users a certain thing has, the more the creators/maintainers have a duty to treat it as a "commons or public infrastructure" and give the users a vote on how the thing is to be managed and developed. This is, of course, utter horsesh*t.