you can discuss the changes to be pushed, you can submit pull requests yourself and if you are dissatisfied about what gets accepted, you can also run your own

you can discuss the changes to be pushed, you can submit pull requests yourself and if you are dissatisfied about what gets accepted, you can also run your own version of the codebase with different implementations (lacking updates) as long as they aren't incompatible with the other nodes. (ie a subset of features instead of different features) if you need me to elaborate on the ramifications/benefits of that let me know.