Fedora is considering removing unmaintaned packages from user's
systems during upgrades, making the process a default but giving the
user a way to opt-out [0]. I agree with the author of that post, if
you're removing a package the user has to explicitly request it or
it has to be opt-in.

I'll give the Fedora devs a hint - Debian has had this figured out
for years, so you may want to look there for a solution. It's simple
- a standard 'apt-get upgrade' will never remove any packages. Full
stop. A 'dist-upgrade' _might_ remove packages, but the user will
see a list and be prompted before apt does its thing. In any case,
even a dist-upgrade won't remove the types of packages they are
talking about, 'leaf packages' that are not used by any other
package. Dist-upgrade only removes packages that were installed as
dependencies for a package that no longer exists.

From the discussion this smacks of 'developer knows best' and is the
type of thinking Gnome has been plagued with for years.

[0]: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/FedoraRemovingMustBeOptIn