Is Gentoo in crisis?

I wholeheartedly agree that barriers to new developers are too high.  I have modified an
ebuild before, submitted patches for a couple (from memory) and am trying to create some
totally new ones.  But it's really hard to get help... eg: #gentoo-dev doesnt give voice.

Two other points:
 - And the whole overlays thing is really user-unfriendly.
   My suggestion is that there should be a 'search overlays as 
   well' flag on emerge (which triggers downloading every overlay), 
   with flashy red warnings etc. if a user tries to install overlaid 
   packages.  This saves USER time and hassle, which is more important
   than computer time.
 - Gentoo's VOIP is totally broken, asterisk is ancient, heaps of packages
   are missing.  I'm trying to get in to this but the people I ran in to
   on IRC (#gentoo-voip) seemed defensive almost to the point of 
   hostility.  That's fine but roll over, I'm going to just make some
   ebuilds for asterisk/asterfax.  Screw this 'overlay' stuff, it's
   like someone's private domain.