I don’t think it’s a coincedence that out of the Linux DE ecosystems, GNOME has probably the biggest presence in little third-party utilities made to match the environment. The DE itself is quite flawed in my opinion, but its consistent and opinionated design system catches the eyes of devs and would-be devs and motivates them to build things.
A similar effect I believe is what’s been largely responsible for the healthy botique indieware scene on macOS too.
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].
A similar effect I believe is what’s been largely responsible for the healthy botique indieware scene on macOS too.