It's disingenuous to argue that you didn't mention anyone by name when you specifically criticize the direction of the project. Since Don has been leading the project, you're really criticizing him.
As far as the size of openacs, the number of packages has increased, but when you load the core, you're still loading basically the same packages that were loaded when aD released acs. We need to do a better job of documenting what we have, as Roberto suggests, but having more choice for modules can generally be considered a good thing. I sympathize with the plight of newbies when they're trying to decide what is useful in openacs, but having Mist won't rectify this problem.
I think something like Mist could be a good addition to openacs, but the wording of your proposal is inflammatory, and it would have been much better received, if you had made it a purely technical proposal.
