It will be annoying for a minute but this change is good: it will help developers ship extensions faster and with fewer bugs by using standard JavaScript modules and IDE support. As mentioned in the blog: modules were standardized in 2015! At what point does it become acceptable to drop non-standard features?

The Right Honorable

Quote from svgo:

SVG Optimizer is a Node.js-based tool for optimizing SVG vector graphics files.

Why?

SVG files, especially those exported from various editors, usually contain a lot of redundant and useless information. This can include editor metadata, comments, hidden elements, default or non-optimal values and other stuff that can be safely removed or converted without affecting the SVG rendering result.