It’s called the ‘inner platform effect’. They are basically replicating parts of the underlying platform (the OS in this case) inside their own application, until the application turns into a platform itself, one crappier than the one below it. You see this happening with web browsers and ‘web apps’.

Then maybe switch to a better OS / Window manager?

You forgot Today and Tomorrow.

The goal is not to find the guilty party, it’s to punish someone.

How is it a retcon? The use of giga- as a prefix for 10⁹ has been in use as part of the metric system since 1960. I don’t think anyone in the fledgeling computer industry was talking about giga- or mega- anything at that time. The use of mega- as a prefix for 10⁶ has been in use since 1873, over 60 years before Claude Shannon even came up with the concept of a digital computer.

if anything, the use of mega- and giga- to mean 1024 is a retcon over previous usage.

What would you say determines whether a kernel is a Unix kernel?

Not what, who. And the answer is The Open Group,