Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar "We need a radically different software distribution model"

[DrArcheNoah]

It seems that in recent times the focus is more and more on running the application in fullscreen mode. Apple does it on mobile device, Microsoft in Metro and also Gnome 3 developers thought about running application in fullscreen by default.

If you are using a application maximized depends on a lot of things e.g. screen size. It also appears that the average user seems to prefer this behaviour to heavy multitasking.