[chrishajer]

> Why not just include the majority of them

Finite resources. WordPress didn’t become great by cramming a bunch of features in. WordPress is great because of the ability to add plugins and themes. Any feature you want, and any look you want, is available in WordPress using a plugin or a theme. If there needs to be a new hook added to WordPress to allow a plugin to accomplish something, they generally do it.

It’s taken WordPress a long time to incorporate into the core a lot of things that used to be plugins, and maybe should still be plugins. bbPress is nowhere near that stage yet.