To take this analysis another level deeper: what has happened here is a classic example of bikeshedding — and, worse, fostering bikeshedding.

Everyone feels equipped to have an opinion about "what should be the syntax for an obvious bit of semantics." There's no expertise required to form such an opinion. And so there are as many opinions on offer as there are Go developers to give them.

Limit input on the subject to just e.g. the people capable of implementing the feature into the Go compiler, though, and a consensus would be reached quickly. Unlike drive-by opinion-havers, the language maintainers — people who have to actually continue to work with one-another (i.e. negotiate in an indefinite iterated prisoner's dilemma about how other language minutiae will work), are much more willing to give ground "this time" to just move on and get it working.

(Tangent: this "giving ground to get ground later" is commonly called "horse trading", but IMHO that paints it in a too-negative light. Horse trading is often the only reason anything gets done at all!)