Why *is* XQuery taking so long?

[Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@gmail.com>]

 > I know it takes time to release quality specs, but I can't seem to
> find any valid reason why XQuery is not out of the working draft
> stage yet.

This is a bit of a permathread, but I would like to solicit opinions
from current or former XQuery participants or outside observers.  The
XQuery activity kicked off with a workshop in 1998 and the working
group was chartered in 1999.  5 years later, no Recommendation in
sight.  Why did this happen?

To kick things off, my  recollection of the rough consensus from the
last time this permathread surfaced was:

- XQuery's requirements were far too ambitious and beyond the state of
the art.  It became an exercise in design by committee rather than
standardizing actual experience.

- XQuery has become rather tightly coupled with several other W3C
specs, especially Schema, XPath, and XSLT.  As is usually the case,
this creates a bit of a hairball -- changing anything requires
untangling everything.

- There are a lot of conflicting intellectual and corporate agendas
interacting, and coming to a mutually acceptable consensus is
challenging at best.

Are any of these in dispute, and what other reasons are there?