I'm a longtime Go watcher, and sometime Go contributor and I agree with this, 100%. Go has benefitted from having a BDFL employed by Google. But outsiders will always be outsiders.
And probably that works well for go and keeps a very clear philosophy and style for the language. It is just the fact they very blatantly misled the community on the scope of possible contributions that frustrates me.
Fuschia does, in all fairness, appear to be considerably more honest on these issues.