The Gnome team lives in constant terror of the end user customizing absolutely anything. So even when they allow it they make sure it's undiscoverable.
You're never going to get app developers to independently agree on one consistent way to do anything. In fact, many of them will deliberately do the opposite of what everyone else does, for nebulous "brand differentiation" reasons.
The article is wrong on that. Top left is "reserved" for the logo, top right for a menu. That's learned behaviour all across the "left to right" world.
