I don't understand how it's a drama. It's an old spec, it's easy to follow, it's standard, and you can still keep compact with the old .dir at user root if you want.
What's the big deal ?
What's the big deal ?
But I do get that for those of us who’ve been using Unix for decades it can be a bit weird when stuff which used to be under $HOME/.$WHATEVER ends up under $HOME/.config/$WHATEVER.