That's great, I did not research this beyond reading (most of, it got pretty technical!) the article.
In retrospect I guess I'm a bit disturbed that I even think about these things in terms of fame/popularity, when it should be solely about tool capabilities and power for its users. :) Shame on me, back to reading FSF doctrine.
I don't think it's wrong to assume that fame/popularity plays a role in open source. Open source developers have to get motivation from somewhere. Taking some pride in developing something popular is fine in my opinion.
That being said, my first impression from the article was quite the opposite of yours. I thought it was great news for CoenraadS. He developed something so useful, that it was integrated into the core. That's impressive! The plugin is obsolete now, but in this case it looks like "mission accomplished".
Of course this move would look different in other app/extension ecosystems where extensions are monetized and/or not open source.
In retrospect I guess I'm a bit disturbed that I even think about these things in terms of fame/popularity, when it should be solely about tool capabilities and power for its users. :) Shame on me, back to reading FSF doctrine.