It stops people saving a master copy as .xcf, then saving as png to export, then hitting Ctrl-S and thinking they've saved their master copy when they haven't.

As such it is most definitely a positive change, even if it does go against my 'muscle' memory of how I used to work it, and cause me to 'doh' more often than I should.

I've been using gimp since at least 2003 and never used .xcf files. Sometimes I accidentally saved as .xcf which was a huge bother, since that file format is useless outside of gimp.

On the flip side, it complicates workflows with non-xcf master copies.

i think of exporting like compiling. the .xcf is the "source" (layers, non-destructive effects, vector paths, etc), and i only want to save when i'm working on that. when i want to "build" it into a flat .png that people can actually use, i export it.

If possible, I'd like to completely get rid of everything xcf inside gimp. It's useless overhead to me.