I know what you mean. I started emacs spacemacs, be cause for me it was the better vim. But with time I got fed up with the bloat of spacemacs and so many details which I can't controll for my personal ways. Now I roll my own fork of spacemacs, tweak it the way I want and still have some external help with the occasional merge from spacemacs-repo.

If this frontmacs grown in the proper direction to support a effortless mix of own and external settings, then it could become even more important than spacemacs for the community and growth of emacs.