You say that like you think such an endeavor would require zero of his time when in fact it would be a large undertaking for him as well in reviewing a large contribution and then having to credentialize it anyways to move forward with the project.
Also, there are an infinite amount of people who say they will do something, but won't actually do it. Has anybody who said they could do a UI overhaul actually started it and arrived at something worth sharing? The fear of the creator being "hostile" to your fork is a convenient excuse but doesn't actually stop you from maintaining a UI fork. Shit or get off the pot.
But the first thing you learn when you run a project with contributors is that contributions aren't just free work that you get to mindlessly merge into master. In fact, it's very likely that reviewing the code, correcting the code, managing the people (and their emotions), credentializing in the code, pulling the code/impl back on a viable course, dealing with UI bikeshedding, etc. are far more work than just doing it yourself. And if it's not something you think is worth that effort, then it's definitely not something you want to just outsource to "the community". And after all that, you aren't even guaranteed a UI that's better than what you replaced.
Also, there are an infinite amount of people who say they will do something, but won't actually do it. Has anybody who said they could do a UI overhaul actually started it and arrived at something worth sharing? The fear of the creator being "hostile" to your fork is a convenient excuse but doesn't actually stop you from maintaining a UI fork. Shit or get off the pot.
But the first thing you learn when you run a project with contributors is that contributions aren't just free work that you get to mindlessly merge into master. In fact, it's very likely that reviewing the code, correcting the code, managing the people (and their emotions), credentializing in the code, pulling the code/impl back on a viable course, dealing with UI bikeshedding, etc. are far more work than just doing it yourself. And if it's not something you think is worth that effort, then it's definitely not something you want to just outsource to "the community". And after all that, you aren't even guaranteed a UI that's better than what you replaced.