In reply to Peter.

Would hardly categorise social integrations as a fundamental. Not every site owner wants social buttons, widgets, etc. but I hear and understand your overall point.

There are fundamental features that are plugins that really should be developed by the core team. Features such as SEO, caching, (better) custom fields (arguable), etc.

The ridiculous thing is there are already highly used plugins that do this so there isn't much development work required to "fork"/move them into core. It would also prevent update issues as many experience through plugins such as Yoast SEO, ACF Pro, etc.

Beyond those, better focus on security features is of the utmost importance. Makes no sense one has to use a, plugin to harden their security as that in itself introduces further insecurities to one's site.

A different, possibly better, approach is having one plugin à la JetPack, that has a bunch of features that are popular but can be opt-out.

Have the plugin as a default (I'm looking at you Hello Dolly!) but give site owners the ability to not use some or all of the features in the default plugin. Think it's bloated? Don't use it but if you would rather have the basics covered, such as SEO, security, caching, etc. install one plugin and be done with it. This also presents better updates as the code will be handled by fewer people.

PS: I don't buy the JetPack bloat argument and I use about 4 - 5 modules on sites I work on.