In reply to markk5.

WordPress has a design philosophy of “decisions not options” which means that the end result of core development is to produce a product which has very few execution paths which are not going to be used in the life time of a site.

I really don't know where you keep getting your information from.

"Decisions not Options" is talking about user experience flow. We as the software developers should make smart decisions, rather than provide a thousand options for a user to slog through and try to make sense of.

https://wordpress.org/about/philosophy/#decisions

Links went out although the menu feature is not a 1:1 replacement for them and so did publish by email.

Links is still shipped in core, just not enabled by default. You can enable it with one line of code:

add_filter( 'pre_option_link_manager_enabled', '__return_true' );

or by installing this plugin:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/link-manager/

Also, Publish by Email is still shipped in core. You can find it on Settings > Writing.

I am sure there are some more areas of core to trim (pressThis….) but even an exporter is not part of the core now.

PressThis just got a huge rewrite in WordPress 4.2, and the Exporter is still bundled in core as it always has been. The Importer, however, has shipped as a standalone plugin for over about years now.

And about this “code not executed when disabled”, isn’t it basic security recommendation in the wordpress world to delete unused themes and plugins? do you remember timthumb?

I certainly do remember TimThumb. Its problem was that it was written standalone to be executed by calling it directly, not loaded through WordPress core -- which is why it could be used when inactive.

As a sidenote, the author of TimThumb has published articles recommending folks not use TimThumb, but instead use Jetpack's Photon module instead: http://www.binarymoon.co.uk/2014/07/dont-use-timthumb-instead/

And no, how photon works is not important as it is illegal to use it with a forked jetpack under its TOS. So in addition to the code liability the is also the legal liability of using all those service with a forked jetpack. which makes forking it as I do to other plugins a dangerous thing to do without a continuous legal advice.

You're free to use Photon in a forked version of Jetpack, so long as you're still agreeing to the Terms of Service by connecting your forked version of Jetpack to WordPress.com. It's necessary to grant us permission to host your images.