The problem was the lack of a leader. Cam Banks stared strong, but got swept up in his 4e 3PP work and never did more than a first draft, and then moved over to Cortex work.
Without a leader, there was too many ideas and much conflict between design. Everyone wanted to do the sexy design (knights, wizards of high sorcerery) and much of the nitty gritty was ignored.
Nobody wanted to step up and take responsibility and start the work.
The other big problem is the GSL, which is far less friendly for this kind of work than the OGL. It explicitly prohibits rewriting rules or flavour text. You can only add rules and options, not re-write the core.
4e is also a nightmare to write and design for. It's a very mechanically tricky system because it is so balanced, there's less wiggle room for design and mechanics. Close enough is not good enough in terms of balance. And as there are just so many options, it's hard not producing a power or feat or feature that doesn't already exist. The edition is filled with powers for the same class or role where there's a similar power, only of lower level or mechanically better.
I did some Dragonlance-esque Subraces here :
New Sub-Races
And there's a wealth of stuff on the Nexus that could be edited and compiled together. And Bank's races guide is a good start on the rest.
