ben_wizards I think Bela knows exactly what it is: a platform for embedded audio and sensor processing that offers the best performance and lowest latency of any open-source embedded linux board around.
I can reassure you that Bela very much is a full-time project, it's simply not yet at the stage where it can pay for its own development, though we are working very hard to get it there. This is likely to change soon, and in the next few months we are looking to employ a developer or two to focus on it specifically.
It's worth noting that most open-source platforms do not pop into existence as finished products. The vast majority of Arduino libraries for example were not written by the original devs at launch, but were contributed by a massive international community numbering in the millions over the best part of a decade.
I know some parts of Bela are not as easy to use as they could be or as I would like and we're working on it, but there's a limit to what a bunch of unpaid PhD students can do in their spare time. We value constructive feedback and a library manager is on the to-do list partly as a result of some of your past comments, but if Bela is not yet suitable for your needs in its current form then we fully understand if you feel you need to change platforms.
We take the developer experience very seriously and are working hard to accommodate the needs of a diverse community.