Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

I might not be the biggest supporter of Canonicals' way of working, but I think it's unfair to complain about this: they are quite clear that they set the goals and targets and you can help or stay out of the way. Quite a valid way of working, even though you might not like it much. You can choose to contribute to a project where YOU can set the goals... That leaves plenty of distro's like openSUSE, Debian and other community-led projects.