Don't bite my head off before you've read it :)
Are there any plans to make the source specific to wordpress.com available for outside development, e.g. to assist in writing plugins or fixes specific that surface independently on wordpress.com?
While I understand as a public service you want to maintain control over the codebase, personally I wouldn't mind contributing fixes/suggestions to the code where appropriate.
I realise if I want to modify code I can download wordpress.org - that's not the issue (I have downloaded it & created plugins). I'm thinking of the specific wordpress.com coding that is not available 2-steps removed.
If that is a no-go, is demonstrating a fix in the standalone version even *useful* to the team for fixing it here? Or are there any guidelines for creating extensions to work on WP.com?
I'd just rather code than complain :\