No, our policy is not to be particularly secretive; we particularly don't want to waste anyones time, ever. There is so much to do that any inefficiency is anathema to us.
We're debating now how to do better. And we're open to suggestions. Ideas?
I'm far from doing any productive work for wine. And if I will it will be targeted at our software mainly. So this could only be helpful for others. But what about this:
You could send a regular Codeweavers-News to the wine-devel (or private mailing-list to know who gets them) where you could summarize the work you're on at the moment (like weekly or once a month). So if someone is hard doing code he can check first with your list and then either move to something else or contact you to join forces. No details necessary, just the big picture.
The other way would be that everybody has to ask you if you're already doing work on this or that or...
bye Fabi