That isn't how gnome works, being decentralized and all. The foundation pays for very little of the development and has little to no influence over what develop

That isn't how gnome works, being decentralized and all. The foundation pays for very little of the development and has little to no influence over what developers actually do. If you wanted the community to have more influence over development, the way to do that would actually be to get more money for the foundation so they can afford to hire more developers from the community. Right now, they don't employ any. The funding they have now is actually shockingly small for a nonprofit based in the USA, and almost unnoticeable compared to what a tech company based in the USA would have. Removal of features would still happen though because that's a natural part of any software project responding to the ever-shifting priorities of a large group of users.