That would allow to drop the default enabling in some packages like gnome-terminal (#635304) But I am not sure if gnome profiles are being used by other gnome related desktops (as MATE or Cinnamon) :/
I don't see that as anything worse for some desktop then, just other profiles users don't get nautilus pulled in. MATE uses caja and cinnamon uses nemo - I don't know if they can use nautilus extensions or not, probably not. gnome-shell similarly - MATE uses marco and cinnamon uses cinnamon instead of gnome-shell. That said, maybe the defaults should be at package.use level in the profile, not make.default level? That said, USE=nautilus already IS default-enabled in profiles/targets/desktop/gnome/make.defaults since CVS times. So, uh, FIXED OBSOLETE? We have bug 614608 for gnome-shell part
Oops, right, I missed it when I grepped into the profiles dir :S Sorry for the noise