i agree with heav here. i do actually agree with several of your criticisms of minecraft, and i probably would be interested in contributing to this project once it exists.
(also, i'm currently working on my own project which is vaguely similar to this? it's not a minecraft clone, it's played on a 2d hex grid for instance, but i am planning to address in it many of the same weaknesses of minecraft that you've talked about too. in particular the stuff about variety of worldgen, and structures and things. actually i'd be quite interested to talk about how worldgen without biomes might work but i don't want to derail this thread more than i already have)