I think writing your own portable C functions is something every programmer wants to own at some point in their young career. Then you grow up and realize there are entire organizations that have spend tens of thousands of man-hours providing the same code, but done correctly and with intent (and consistent philosophy). GObject is that philosophy, but lots of people never hear about it until someone says "Why not use GObject?" :)
This is completely anecdotal, but when I was looking for something like this ~10 years ago (and was just beginning to learn about the wider Linux ecosystem outside of libc), I stumbled upon GObject and completely ignored it because of its association with GNOME. My initial thoughts was that GObject was only really useful if you were building things for the GNOME ecosystem and wrote it off completely. I also did the same with GLib.
I know now that the association only really goes as far as who maintains it, but if it wasn't for how it was branded, I probably would have been using it in a lot more of my projects.
Sounds kind of stupid, but never underestimate how branding can affect how your project gets used. Especially by people who are unfamiliar with it.
I was referring to myself too in my original post, but I don't think it was clear. I resisted GObject/GLib for the exact same reasons you listed. Plus as a younger programmer I was super fussy about style conventions and didn't like introducing other styles with my "pure" style. (I know, I know.) It wasn't until I started using GStreamer that I saw the light.
Your comment could have been mine. Many years ago, I found GObject interesting, but was afraid using it would lead to friction when used outside GNOME's ecosystem.
