I don’t think the parents complaint is about the workflow as such. There is basically no information on how to start as a developer, giving the impression of a closed cabal. A project that wants and welcomes help should in some way facilitate that: have a page or a section of a page that welcomes contributors, explains how and where to start, how to get changes accepted. It’s fine if that is “please just send us an email, we’ll pick you up there.”, but “how to contribute?” appears exactly zero times on the page.