IMHO it's definitely true that it holds a lot of OSS stuff back,  
especially the lack of coherent developer documentation and  
properly-commented examples.

I think it's a symptom of the mindset with a lot of people who devote time  
to OSS, which is basically (and quite rightly) that, since they're giving  
their time they're going to spend it on the interesting stuff. In the  
projects I participate in, as well as those I run, I consistently find it  
most difficult to get people to document even the features they add, let  
alone help document existing stuff. So you get gems like:

/**
 * get the register
 *
 * @param registerIndex the register index
 *
 * @return The register
 *
 * @throws SomeException on error
 */
public Register getRegister(registerIndex) throws SomeException {
  return registers.get(registerIndex);
}

It's like the whole 'start at 1.0' thing, when writing the software  
doesn't even get you halfway there in the real world. I'm fortunate I  
suppose in that I find it very easy to document, but generally the fashion  
is to do the interesting stuff, leave the tweening to someone else, and  
declare anything you don't have time or inclination to provide as  
'useless' or 'retarded', or (more common than you think) invent a new  
AntiPatternWikiWord to describe it (as in ProvideUserDocumentation,  
AssumeUserIsNotClairvoyant, and ExpectConsistentUseOfCollectionsOrArrays).

In my own stuff, once past the drastic-changes phase, I always try to make  
sure theres plenty of documentation, but more importantly that it's clear,  
relevant documentation (e.g. Javadoc for contracts, the most general usage  
information at most one click on the website, etc) but it can be a losing  
battle sometimes. Believe it or not, some FOSS projects don't even _want_  
documentation, and many of those that do don't understand the difference  
between documentation and advertising.

No, it's not.  It used to be, but it was revived by Jon Skeet, Brian
Palmer, and myself several years ago.  Jon still puts a lot of effort
into making sure that announcements get through.  I check over there
whenever I can.  Additional volunteers for moderators would be greatly
appreciated, and can be emailed to:

   announce-discuss@mail.javamoderator.org

The other thing that's helpful is to post announcements of interesting
things to the newsgroup.  A majority of announcements currently come
from the development teams of certain (both free and commercial) Java
libraries and products.  It would be nice to see more community-oriented
announcements as well.

I've been exploring possibilities for writing a screen-scraper to post
announcements when JSRs are started, enter a public review, or release a
final spec.  Any other suggestions?