See: http://blogs.testbit.eu/timj/2006/12/20/20122006-gtk-core-maintainer-shortage/ (page moved)
Recently there have been complaints about a lack of quality assurance in the Gtk+ project and introduction of regressions with releases. Also the pace at which bugs and feature requests are being addressed may not be to everyones liking.
The reasons for these issues are manifold, some are persisting for a long time and aggravated, others emerged only recently. Some stem from the code structure, others from the variety of interests different parties have in Gtk+, and the list goes on… I think in a nutshell, it can all be boiled down to a single concise fact:
Gtk+ has an alarming shortage on core maintainer resources.
That being said, let me make one thing crystal clear here: this can not be blamed on the core maintainers themselves, they are doing their best to cope with the situation as it is. By a large ratio, there simply isn’t enough man power available to handle all the incoming requests, to review all contributed patches, debug all the bugs filed and to do important nurturing and maintenance work needed by an ever growing code base (like refactoring).
This situation has been persisting for a longer time now, and has led to significant aging in the code base and affected the overall quality of the project. As time passes, it’ll just become worse if we’re not going to put more resources at the project as a community. I figured that in order for this to happen, a sense for the problematic nature of the current maintenance situation has to first be developed in the community, which is why i posted to gtk-devel and related lists yesterday: