This is hardly surprising considering Go shares its creators with Plan 9 among other things. They have had this kind of attitude for years, see for example this thread where someone asks about some features in the Acme editor:
If anyone told me ,"write better code," in response to a question like, "does it have code folding?" I would be pretty enraged. I don't even use code folding.
To be fair, the original person was asking about the "Acme way." And the Acme way is, indeed, to just say no to a lot of the conventional wisdom about how editors should work.
Go may share some of Acme's developers, but it is a very different project to Plan 9.
I've noticed that software developers (and people in general), at the highest level, are split into three camps.
One of them takes the "nothing really matters at all" attitude (see: the majority of PHP developers). These people do not subscribe to dogma in the least but lack structure to such an extent that everything is a mess.
The next category is of the opinion that everything must be done in a certain way (the Plan 9 creators, most Java developers). This camp emphasises dogma above all else, even at the expense of common sense.
The final group, which is in the minority, consists of those who are truly pragmatic while taking the ideal into account at the same time. They tend towards perfection but know that the universe is not perfect. These are the Zen masters of development.
Most of what's built on a "nothing really matters" platform is total mess.
Most of what's built on top of a "certain way" platform works and is a good foundation to build more platforms.
Most of what's built on top of the "truly pragmatic" platform works, but is less often a foundation to build more platforms.
We need the fanatics like RMS to jumpstart GNU, and the Plan9 people to jumpstart plan9 - a lot of what you take for granted in Linux these days like namespaces, /proc, utf-8 was copied from Plan9, and for a reason: It's easier to copy features from a clean, consistent, proven implementation like Plan9 then from an inconsistent hodgepodge like the NT kernel. (And yes, I did NT kernel programming until just about the time XP came out; I say that with authority).
I do not know much at all about plan9 so I cannot comment on it but in regards to GNU -
GNU/Linux would never have gained mass adoption if certain compromises were not made. If proprietary code were completely outlawed in Linux and the GNU userland then we would not see it everywhere today.
Instead of looking at what one individual does, let's zoom out to the level of individuals working together. For an important idea to come to fruition, both sides of the coin we are talking about must invariably be addressed.
The interesting thing about us is that we can mesh our brains into bigger collective systems which in themselves act as brains - it's a fractal shape. Some individuals are capable of achieving zen on their own. Some individuals can serve as parts of a greater brain (a mass of individuals communicating with each other). That greater brain must address both sides of the coin if it is to yield something novel.
We need fanatics like RMS to jumpstart GNU but we also need pragmatists to make something truly useful of it. One does not work without the other, in both directions, in my opinion.
Thinking about it, GNU/Linux is a good example of this relationship. Stallman is an idealist and laid down very important groundwork with the GPL and GNU applications. Linus is a pragmatist and built something imperfect but extremely useful upon that foundation. If Linux did not exist then GNU would be useless (see: the HURD). If GNU & the GPL did not exist, Linux would have been bought up by a corporation and would have barely seen the light of day. The combination of idealism and pragmatism profoundly changed the world.
Of course, there does seem to be another aspect you are leaving out. It is probably easier to worry about these properties when your userbase is tiny.
Additionally, it may be easier to copy features from a "clean, consistent, proven implementation," but it is not always easy to copy features into said programs. Consider that few things are as "proven" as the Linux kernel. Or the TeX codebase, for that matter. Neither are usually considered "clean" or "consistent." While the later is seen as an interesting example of a completed code base that is no longer changing, few things have stood additions as well as the kernel.
http://9fans.net/archive/2008/08/134
"Just say no"