The small community around Slava Pestov was (is) great... The standard library is amazing and they (used to) follow a model that has worked well for them (IRRC

The small community around Slava Pestov was (is) great... The standard library is amazing and they (used to) follow a model that has worked well for them (IRRC): the best libraries from the community become part of the distribution. If they aren't that well written, the core guys would help you express the idea better. And then it could make it into the standard library. Or the core guys would just rewrite it for you (Factor is very compact). On the other hand, if something solving that same problem was already in the standard library, there was no discussion: that problem is already solved. Happy to see that Factor still lives!