In my example of desktop icons, removing its defunct, unmaintained code from Nautilus enabled GNOME developers to build a better Nautilus, one that focuses on its actual job of managing files, not drawing desktop icons.

Meine Meinung dazu:
This is bullshit. "Removing Desktop Icons to build a better Nautilus"? The Desktop Icon View was a slightly adjusted view of the same Icons in the Nautilus app itself. Desktop Icons have been drawn by the very same code as the in-app-Icons. This is the same bullshit as saying, we have CSS-capable customizability (it would have never been easier to create wonderful widgets!!!) but we don't support theming at all.