Why not let it take 22 months?
It seems to me that there are boatloads of distros out there. I happen to like Debian precisely because - thus far - it Just Works(sm). Of the machines here, one runs MacOS, three run straight Debian-latest, one runs Kubuntu, and one is RHEL4. And there's plenty of Knoppix boot CDs around.
If you are in *such* a hurry to be a developer, then start your own. Or contribute where it's "faster". If you look at what the project team expects, it's impressive, to the point of staggering. At least if you are hoping to be a full-blown package maintainer.
If the current problems are really representative of inefficiencies*, then by all means, "fix" the problem somehow. But if it slows down the process of adding the 69th music player app or the 432nd paint program, that's fine. Too many cooks really can spoil the broth.
-Del
* too lazy to follow the link to the current forum furor.