tl;dr: Don't piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining.
I understand what you're getting at but I've been with the project since 4.7, and I feel like the time for happy-fun-time talk has passed. Like most community developers, I supported the overwhelming majority of the changes that went into D7 when they where being discussed among the community. Now faced with the reality of D7, I see that some (maybe most) of these additions where a mistake.
Assuming Dries' keynote wasn't based on random numbers, Drupal had reached the "1% of total websites" threshold well before D7 was released. There was no choke point. Look at the following web server statistics http://greatstatistics.com/
MSSQL support doesn't service the majority of potential consumers of a CMS, just a small minority of potentially well-heeled clients that run Microsoft-based environments.
It's counter-intuitive but I've come to realize that sucking module functionality into core is stupid. Example: your choice of forum, aggregator, or blog. All crusty, useless modules that any serious implementation will either ignore, patch heavily with additional contributed modules, or just go with a fully contrib alternative. Why do these modules all suck? They've been stuck in core and thus cannot change. When a major release is planned everyone's busy focusing on the shiny new stuff to cram into core and modules like this are typically neglected. Why should the fields API be any different, given the track record of the last five years?
Also, you may not want to lose sight of the fact that it makes Drupal shops (you know, the little guys who are busily engaged with growing and maintaining Drupal's adoption base) look bad in front of clients when they've been on the receiving end of Acquia-sponsored D7 marketing blasts, meanwhile we're waving them off from migrating because core isn't stable and critical contrib modules are either unstable (RC$n or beta) or entirely non-existent in D7.
I know several contrib module developers that have thrown their hands up in disgust and gone on to work with other communities while new developers are struggling with the unprecedented complexity in D7.
I agree, the changes are big. Some of them are awesome (new menu structure, new AJAX api). Others range from obnoxious and/or useless (overlay) to actively harmful (see also core bug queue explosion). There was a large and VERY vocal contingent among the community that was calling for smallcore years before D7 shipped and a blind eye was turned by a vanishingly small yet disproportionately powerful minority, and now it's biting everyone who isn't vying to become a Microsoft Enterprise Partner in the ass.
And that is my take on the Drupal community as it stands currently. You don't have to agree with me but it would be a mistake on your part to assume I'm an outlier.