the valid criticism of opinionated gnome desktop is that gnome is being redesigned right now with no particular reason, just highly opinionated developers feel like it. That's weird from a gnome user perspective(the one that agreed with previous iteration of opinionated work flow).
Well, that's the project of those "highly opinionated developers". They work for free, and they really sleep well if you prefer to install XFCE or create a fork of the previous iterations of Gnome.
Gnome Foundation rises lots of money from both companies and individuals and there are gnome developers working full-time or part-time and being paid to do it, so this old argument "this is free software, they work for free in their spare time, they owe you nothing" doesn't apply in this context.
Yes you are right. But the user base is not paying a cent. Of course, there is maybe some 0.0x% users who donate sometimes...
« They owe you nothing » totally apply in this context. Even if you were a donator (which there are few probability you are).
I don't minimise Windows, I love the launcher, the keyboard shortcuts make so much more sense than osx, and it's not the sluggish monster everyone seems to think it is.