I use Lubuntu for my desktop, and this line of thought has occurred to me. I expect sometime in the near to medium future I'll be using LXDE on Debian. Unity was the writing on the wall for me. No grudges toward Canonical, I'm just gradually becoming less of a good fit as a user.

Lubuntu (and Xubuntu) are great distros. They definitely deserve more sponsorship, so that they can be more fully fleshed out. There's a large number of people who aren't going to put up with Unity who could be converted to Lubuntu and Xubuntu users.