That's not "changed his mind", that's "found ways to route around the braindamage with unofficial things the GNOME 3 'designers' won't accept".
Also, nice calling the work of others "brain damage" when they really try to improve the state of desktop usability. Granted, not every of the concepts is brilliant, but if you don't try, we'll be stuck in Windows 95 concepts forever
Isn't it obvious that he means that they won't accept them as built-in and/or the defaults, not that they don't accept them as extensions.
Linus also alludes to the exact same thing when he suggests they make them "easy to find and part of the standard install", and adds:
Or would that be too close to "Ok, we admit we were wong" and thus not politically acceptable?
"""Also, nice calling the work of others "brain damage" when they really try to improve the state of desktop usability."""
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Shipping sane defaults is not a bad way to go, given that the extensions are easily findable and installable by power users that want them.
I still run GNOME 3.0, so the extension installer doesn't work for me, so I can't confirm. But I think with GNOME 3.2 onwards the extensions gallery stuff should be installable pretty much as easily as extensions for your browser are.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I can assure you, the road to hell is not paved at all: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/153040664/in/set-7215759...
(as context, there is a valley called 'Hell' in South Africa)
Oh, and it should be mentioned that nothing stops Linux distributions from shipping the extensions they feel necessary. Look at what the Mint guys did for their GNOME 3 setup: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_lisa_whatsnew.php