one thing that could perhaps speed up gentoo is specifying at what point 
or what steps are required before it is ok to "step on others toes".

we have the QAcanfix keyword, for bugs where QA "threatens" to just fix 
the bug if the maintainer doesn't react timely... but it appears to be the 
tree could generally move faster, if there was an agreement as to when 
somebody is allowed to fix another maintainers stuff.

if we had a formal process in place, one could always execute on that and 
fix the issue oneself, instead of having the cheap excuse of "well, 
<slowguy> hasnt fixed bug xxx yet, so i cant move".

this process should ideally be very lean and short - as to not discourage 
these type of changes.

kind regards
Thilo