Something I’m going to say here, may belong or may not. But there should be a more clear communication and leadership about ongoing things that are happening regarding core dev.
That means, keep this updated: Currently Active Projects - Projects - ClassicPress Forums (and if something is not really active, it should not be there, maybe have a second place for stale stuff that can be awaken… but, keep the active stuff in focus, crystal clear: “This is our focus now”).
If someone with dev skills sees that, he/she is gonna be lost and say: “uff… don’t know where to start, this seems dead”.
It needs to be: “We need to do this and this and this now for this task”. Like, divide the bigger task into smaller and realistic achievable milestones that any dev can see and say: “hmm… doesn’t look that crazy to me, let’s do it”.
Easier tasks → more people helping.
And big complex tasks are almost always a combination of many easy tasks. Someone needs to understand them and chunk them down and serve small taskiess for devieess to get 'em done.
Divide and conquer.