I think in a perfect world they should had put someone in between to mediate and curate patches while providing DKMS for urgent patches.

As for BTRFS I think its also pretty good. Its just that I have the impression its development is guided by the needs of its sponsors and sadly for us META doesn't need RAID5.

Meta doesn't have anyone working on btrfs anymore, it appears to be two guys at SuSE and drive bys.