First, I'd like to emphasise that logical replication has been stalled for ages now because we can no longer make forward progress on core features needed until we have in-core logical replication (they're dismissed as irrelevant, no in core users, etc) - but we have also had difficulty getting logical replication into core. To break this impasse we really need logical replication in core and need to focus on getting the minimum viable feature in place, not trying to make it do everything all at once. Point-to-point replication with no forwarding should be just fine for the first release. Lets not bog this in extra "must have" features that aren't actually crucial.
I don't think any person who actually works on postgresql with customers and clearly deals with "competition" can state with any sanity that we don't need logical replication in core.
No, and while people used to, we're past that now.
However, infrastructure improvements to make out-of-tree logical replication that we can get into user hands *now* rather than two+ years from now have been getting knocked back because there's no in-tree user, and tools like pglogical dismissed as irrelevant. Once we have logical replication in core hopefully we can start making infrastructure progress again as well.
