I am not saying that Rich is doing anything wrong. What I am saying is that there has been a clash of expectations. I agree completely with Rich's clarification on OSS, but I think it failed to actually meet the ones that have been hurt (for the lack of a better word) by the process so far.
But that is just my view as an outsider. I have never actually used clojure more than just for fun.
Isn’t one of the touted strengths of Clojure that if you want to do something your way, you can make a library, and you don’t have to wait for or rely on the core language maintainers to accept it as canon?
So whether or not your proposal makes it into core, you can still put it out there and people can still make use of it if they find it useful. Specter looks like a good example of this.