Michael Schlenker has very succinctly stated the need for a rich standard library for Tcl in several usenet postings
Tcl has two competing groups in the discussion: The embedders that are concerned about startup time, library size, memory footprint and things like that on the one side, the "batteriers-included-huge-stdlib-in-the-core" fraction on the other side. Those targets are impossible to reach at the same time. So instead of making it a problem, try to create a virtue. a) Let the embedders factor out as much functionality as possible from the core into a modular stdlib b) Let the batteries group add as much useful functional as required into a modular stdlib