In such case disjoint between users and developers is even further. I am professional developer, yet I have zero contributions to my framework and just a few contributions to libraries. After 10 years my contributions to Linux community limited to bug reports, few patches and manuals.
In reality there is not enough community support to maintain existing systems. "Freedom to take a project in another direction if they desired" by individual is overrated, that's TempleOS.
EDITED: Some bragging about making a difference
There are a lot of projects with less corporate influence. No systemd on BSD, but hardware support is not as good. Generic distributions is something that works for most of the users. There are a lot of niche distributions and projects (Void Linux runit!). Current state is just a reflection of users priorities.
I respect that you are willing to admit you don't know the full history and implore others to understand why for example, certain decisions were made. It seems as if many people love to theorize about what these are, making correlations which are usually driven more by their feelings than reality.
I feel like character assassination was a phrase that I feel aptly describes how I've seen a lot of people treat people like Lennart Poettering. I feel as if some people are unable to separate person from their opinions. Not considering that person like they are more likely to do so if they were in person.
I sometimes feel like this attitude is more strongly felt by some people in a community where there is freedom to take a project in another direction if they desired (I know that not everyone has this option).
I do think however that the article of this thread expresses their opinion on an issue in a way that it explains how it effects them without resorting to emotional attacks towards the project and it's something I really liked about reading it.