Nano, Firstly Thank You for that long post. A huge amount of information, and now many things make more sense.
Am I a believer in GNU/GPL? Ardent believer and advocate. rms remains one of the moret impressive people that I've been privileged to meet, and that was well before FSF, GNU, etc. It's been almost 10 years since I bought a proprietary software product barring the almost unavoidable but heavily resented Microsoft Tax on a new PC, and at least 5 years since I upgraded anything proprietary. And no, I haven't been using bootleg copies either.
I am also a great believer in the truth, no matter how painful it may be to learn. I've found that hiding the truth - no matter how noble the motives - all too often leads to bigger problems in the end, and almost always prolongs them.
I was unaware of your health issues, and am truly sorry to hear about them. We all take our health too much for granted - until it's impaired. Here's hoping your recovery goes well.
I believe I am a strong supporter of DragonflyCMS, both the site and the product. And indeed I will remain a supporter and user of DragonflyCMS regardless and independent of my level of activity here at DragonflyCMS.org. I've committed months if not years of effort developing and supporting Pro_News, and I'm not about to chuck that away.
I get a kick out of bending Pro_News (and sometimes DF

) to suit my every whim, to solve a specific requirement or to meet someone's requested need. But I also get a huge kick out of supporting it! Communicating with my users, and working with them to mutually enhance the product or their site or both. I've never physically met anyone who uses Pro_News (beyond my handful of clients of course), but still count many of them as friends. That mostly takes place at my own site of course.
My outburst here was directly as a result of frustration. Not so much frustration at what was - or indeed wasn't - happening, but because I feel strongly that this community could be so much more, and that DragonflyCMS could only be better as a result of it.
Nano, most of us still here are not developers in the way you mean when you say " ... using the downloadable zip file as normal users and not as developers." Yeah I blunder through PHP, etc. on Pro_News, but my coding days were a long time ago (there's a very good reason I didn't learn C

and my use of Dragonfly is no more as a developer than my use of an OS - it's just a platform.
I use CVS locally for Pro_News, I can pull a CVS and did for reDesign, but really there is no reason for me to have a DF CVS version. I need a stable, consistent platform, so the version of DF that I deploy, that I use, that I test on, and that I fully support, is just 1 version - a slightly patched 9.2.1. The issue of the earlier update to 9.2.1 made me realise that to run Pro_News I don't need a later/better version of DF. Don't get me wrong, if there was one which offered benefits I'd jump on it, but the current one meets all my criteria - for now and the immediately foreseeable future.
That said I do have improvements that I would like to see, and some that I've implemented and released and would very much like to see in DF by default. But in the vacuum that is currently dragonflycms.org it's really hard to see how to make anything like this happen.
I believe my nbbcode with support for the widely used table BBCodes, as well as surfacing the list BBCodes, would be a good inclusion - IMHO. And you already know that I see reDesign3 as an essential part of DF which should be in the standard release, if not the default (small d) theme alongside the existing Default (large D) theme.
But there is no way to effectively even campaign for that here, AFAICS. Entering a brief Feature Request is not going to create a groundswell of support, nor is it going to make it happen NOW. Honestly I'm not interested in whether it is committed to be in v10 or not. It needs to be in in months or less. Like it or not we live on "Internet Time" these days, and way too many things over which we have no control will change before then, so who knows if reDesign will even be still relevant by then?
As I've got this far, another issue I see for DF is the effort of - successfully - installing an add-on. Not the installer per se, you Nano, have done a great job in streamlining that, but simply uploading the various folders to the right place is daunting and error-prone for a newbie. AS is picking packages, etc. Simple solution is an alternate release of DF which includes a rational set of modules already installed. And a marketing focussed demo site so people can see it, test drive it, and know they can replicate it, before they "buy." If it contained 80% of what 80% need, it woudl provide a platform for users to install and use, and get up to speed with and learn about, before they need to determine how to add modules. DIsk space is cheap these days, even on Hosts, and it is much easier to enable/disable a properly installed module than it is to install and configure one.
None of that requires Nano or other true developers, members here can do much of this themselves as a group, but it DOES require open communication - and discussion - with ALL so that it is done in way which can and will gain full support after it is completed.
I have no intention to leave - unless I'm asked

- but I don't want to be here and not leave a mark either. That is what GNU - F/LOSS is all about, no?