It's all a matter of trade-offs. I agree that there is a place for a privacy-oriented alternative and Monero seems to be the only option. I'll have to spend a day to do at least some surface-level research because I know very little and I'm interested what I'd find. I am on the side of ossification unless existential threat. W/e developers want to do, they can do on L2/3. You let developers fuck around for long enough and they'll fuck every project up. After every update ossification becomes less of an option just because developers have fucked the protocol so much.