Here's the way I see this from my POV.
First some perspective.
There are approx. 5 people actively participating in this discussion. 1000's of other people are happy just downloading the driver. In my mind they are the market.
Now some reality.
I have been maintaining the driver since around 2000. Since that time others have contributed greatly. Namely Kris Jurka and Oliver Jowett stand out as people who have stepped up in a big way and in fact taken over much of the work when I was unavailable
At the moment I am the only one left. I have never been paid for any of this. I am not expecting to, but this reality means that I have limited time to work on it.
Other than Kris and Oliver, there have been others who have expressed interest in donating their time and effort, for whatever reason they do not remain active.
In the case of Kevin's 10 month old patch Craig Ringer originally reviewed that patch and I left him in charge of it. As a result it became stale and Kevin decided his time was better spent writing a whole new driver.
In most open source projects people get involved slowly. Patches which involve large changes to the codebase are not accepted by people who are not going to take future responsibility for them.
Keep in mind that I have considerable knowledge of how the code works right now. If I were to accept a huge change, then I become responsible for it. Unless I see some continued commitment from someone how do I know they will continue to be responsible for this new code ?
Moving forward. As I see it the number one problem is lack of resources. Instead of opting for wholesale change the project needs resources. Someone else to review patches, someone to work on the website. Someone to deploy to maven.
Anyone feel like volunteering ?