There are so many areas where the various desktop environments should be collaborating, but aren't. KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and Cinnamon all have menu item extensions, yet they are wholly incompatible, forcing every one of them to create their own reinvented wheels. At least the GTK environments should have combined and standardised their efforts here over a decade ago (KDE would be harder to integrate here because they use Qt).
Users should come first. This is such a no-brainer.
A developer should be able to create a menu item extension, say a weather forecast, and have it work on GNOME, Xfce, and Cinnamon. It's bonkers that it has to be individually redeveloped for every environment.
The same story, again and again. Standardizing is hard, because technical and human hurdles. And it's true that can limit innovation when the thing is new and there is not enough knowledge. But the entire web is a very clear proof that it can be a really good thing.
There should be a common ground. But reinventing the wheel making it exactly what you like is easier than negotiate a compromise with others. My yard, my rules.
But if browser makers have been able to do an common API for browser extensions, they can do it too.
