I think what motivates people to patch over Gnome deficiencies is its position as the de facto standard "enterprise" DE, where you basically have no choice but to use it.
There’s a handful of third party apps that serve that function, but that’s really more the domain of GNOME shell extensions.
What I’m talking about are apps built not because there weren’t serviceable options in their categories prior, but because there weren’t any that made an effort to be at unity with the larger GNOME desktop. Apps like Errands[0], Folio[1], Shortwave[2], and Newsflash[3].
