There's an open space to fill right now for "switchers" coming from Mac OS, with a high expectation of polished experience when they invest more than $2k into their main driver hardware. These new Linux users don't want "choice at all costs" (the current vibe I get from the community) but rather, "good design that just works", with a Mac OS expectation origin. I think this explains why System76 chose Gnome over KDE, and why they built Cosmic. If their users aren't satisfied with Gnome's (somewhat inflexible) constraints, then the natural choice is to piecemeal develop a better DE for customers.