I do not want to do a character assassination of anybody here. I appreciate that putting a creative group of people together to agree on the design of a piece of FOSS must be very challenging. I feel AP came across in his videos as a very determined and opinionated (not a negative comment against him) developer. He appeared to have some very black and white ideas about what was good and what was bad in DT. I remember him making a comment once where he said photography was about the look and I 100% agree with this comment. As a single example of many instances he was very critical of the shadow and highlights module and would happy tell you it was bad and should not be used, his fantastic tone equalizer module is not despite what he may claim a direct replacement of the shadow and highlights module. They produce different looks. On the surface it may appear they both brighten the shadows and darken the highlights, but S&H modules lifts the colours and the contrast in the shadows and I often like that look. It does it with a single click to activate the module. My point being that what a single developer wants to call bloat another person will call an essential tool.
I downloaded Ansel to see if it was more stable on my machine as I was having numerous crashes in DT when trying to use Astrodenoise. I have no definitive answer to if it is more stable, but what I noticed was just how much was missing from Ansel that included features I loved. It was a stripped down version of DT and for that reason I remain a dedicated DT user. I hope that AP can share and contribute his great features with DT while maintaining his personal fork. After all there is Rawtherapee and Art. They seem to co-exist without animosity.
As for comments that the GUI was bloated with too many options and too many options in the preferences, I would say there is not enough. The ability to find images using the selection filters is great, but in my opinion could go even further. As for preferences to customise DT they are great, but could have more. The only bloat I see is the bloat that makes the developer’s job impossible. So I appreciate that one day certain modules have to disappear because they can’t be maintained or consume the developer’s time for very little reward.
DT is more than one person.