Well, unless you decided to use GNOME, then you get rugpulled by a bunch of people that think they know better than user what user wants and actively ignore any feedback
But you can also use MATE still to this day, or even Cinnamon.
Hey! Someone sneaked into my brain and wrote down my exact comment!
You can always fork it if you don’t like the choices they make
That’s the point the OP is trying to make about the advantage of open source