As to why distro maintainers go along, if you had to vet every time the network stack updated and make sure it doesn't break your custom solution to predictable naming, you'd probably just go along with it and let anyone that needed it devise and maintain their own solution. 99% of users won't worry about it.
IDK, I've found Gnome unusable for a long time. I tried to make up for it with extensions for a while, but every release would unapologetically break something I found essential and the extension devs would give up trying to keep them going.
I understand that eventually they got better about dropping breaking changes without warning, because extension devs were leaving in droves, but at that point KDE got good again with Plasma, and I've never looked back.
Gnome has their vision to be a completely hands off, dumbed-down, unbreakable DE for the lowest common denominator. I guess judged by that light, it's a success. It's the default in a lot of distros because it's low maintenance for packaging and support. Frankly, I think it's a major reason for the slow speed of Linux desktop uptake, but what do I know.
Jesus, I don't miss that shit. Now, it has to be something way the hell out in left field to not be picked up and installed silently. linux-firmware ftw
This one? It was only started a couple years ago, I'm not even sure there's been multiple major version changes since it was put out and generally available.