I think this is mostly a problem with any formalized
'organization'.
Lets just say that a long time ago, Red Hat east and Red Hat west would
say the same things you say above.. The reality was that both had
deadlines, social politics, and other items that made it easier for
something to get done if you got 10 seconds of face time than if you
sent an email.
I have seen the same things at Academic institutions where getting the
time/effort of someone in your Astro department is always easier than
getting it from Biology. After a while, everyone in Astro knows that
Biology is a bunch of lazy losers because you can never get them to do
something you need.
It is also a personality problem of most people that the perceived
amount of time to communicate that something has come up is longer than
the actual time to do so. EG it seems easier to try and finish the 100
lines of code that the guy down the hall really needs for his work to be
done, than to tell the 20 people who arent inside the building and
coming by the cubicle every 10 minutes that you are going to be late or
their features have to be dropped.
So in the end, people outside of Red Hat feel shitted on, the people
inside of Red Hat dont understand why people are always picking on them,
and eventually some psycology doctorate gets another paper on the
insanity of mankind.
That's all fine and good, in the meantime while the psychology student
gets his/her paper fedora has fallen apart and it useless to both red
hat and the users.
-sv