I say this is NOT freedom.
R> The usual arguments apply. Don't like it - patch it. Patches are
R> welcome.
Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo dialect?"
That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not a
thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good enought, then
you have to understando how the program works and how to change
it. Then you have to write the changes and possibly test it against
existing test cases, it requires skills, it requires time.
Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it. But there are
other users, not this unskilled but lacking, who knows, time and
wishing nevertheless that some option was available, say, running
WindowMaker on top of Gnome daemons. And for those there should be at
least a good document about doing it. And not leaving them being
forced to do something like a "triple backward sommersault" for doing
these changes.
This is more a "distribution level" choice, like "install Debian
Desktop something like a (better and improved) 1999 machine", at
least with the configuration working the old way.
It is not easy, it requires resources too. But these are my two cents.