I want to suggest that the real antagonism that is created by these environments is not between developers and users (the users are typically so far down as to not even be noticed).
The real antagonism is between developers and ... let's say ... "power users".
If you are sufficiently technical to understand the tool in it's totality and to appreciate the ramifications of your own suggestions or use cases, etc., there should be a place for you in those discussions.
However, my experience has been that the attitude of "you're either hacking on the kernel or you don't matter at all" is very pervasive.
So Stallman was right once again ;)