Is the context of that something in the financial markets, or are they concerned over the infiltration of Core and internal battles?

Mainly stuff like feeds not loading, hard to figure out UIs, buttons (like follow, or reply not working or as one would expect), identity stuff like NIP-05 kind of working or not and inconsistent to know if it is. I'm guessing some of this has to do with underlying tech like relays, so maybe isn't fixable? But, to the normie, Nostr feels inconsistent and broken compared to somewhere like 𝕏.

Agree, but I'll push back a bit on that list statement in one way. As a non-Nostr-power-user, part of the problem I see (which is a common trap, even in centralized stuff, like Apple), is that maybe there's a bit too much building, and not enough refining. I can't even mentally keep up with all the wild and cool stuff Nostr-related tech can do... but, the UX of the 'gateways' into this universe (let alone the more advanced uses) is sometimes kind of rough. If it is hard to get a corporation to focus on fixing, maintaining, polishing the core... instead of new features, I certainly don't have an answer in regard to open-source. But, that's one of the big issues I see as somewhat a normie looking at it.