The GNOME Calendar maintainers bring up the fact that Linux Mint ships a nearly 2 year old version of GNOME Calendar to its users and still keep the GNOME branding and support links.
The Linux Mint team don't see an issue with shipping old, unmaintained software and would rather ignore the issue and pretend it doesn't exist. The recent releases of Linux Mint have downgraded several pieces of software to their older GNOME 3 versions which re-introduce fixed bugs and removes newer features. This was done to support their theming engine, despite the fact that their theming is already several releases too old for GNOME apps.
In addition, they utilize several old GNOME related system components that apps rely on such as GNOME Calendar so even installing a newer version of Calendar wouldn't be enough.
This ties into a much larger issue of "Long Term Support" desktop operating systems where software can be pulled back for nearly 5 years (or even longer under a contract). Necessary fixes that are too complicated to be patched back in (or count as features) are then missed by users. Users end up using years-old flagship desktops (GNOME and KDE) and get their first impression of those projects from versions that none of the upstream maintainers support.
It's a shitty situation all around: I personally think it's incredibly important to use the latest release of software that's supported by upstream. GNOME does not actively support older versions of its app and shell from more than a release ago and distributions shipping these older GNOME releases can only cause damage to GNOME's reputation.
If this isn't possible, then I don't think it's right to still keep the branding and trademark of the application, much less keep the original support links intact.
Users get Gnome via their distributions, always have. Distributions have been shipping old software since forever. This is not new, a Gnome dev must understand this is how this works, they knew what they were getting into.
This discussion isn't new either, this pops up every now and again. People have quite good reasons for wanting to run LTS distros, so you're not going to get rid of them. I will argue that upstream devs should want their software to be included in LTS releases, certainly Gnome would lose massive amounts of users if it wasn't included in LTS. I certainly would not want to rely on or recommend any software that can't be included in Debian stable for example, even if I were not using Debian stable on my laptop a the moment. Just the knowledge that I might want to run it on an LTS and it then being a pain in the ass to manually install would make me avoid it.
Upstream should accept that this the reality of how a large part of their users get their software, and want to get their software. I certainly do. I trust Debian a lot more about acting in my interest than I do pretty much any upstream. Distros usually do not hurt upstream either (quite the opposite), not in terms of reputation nor by wasting their time. They certainly aren't trying to. The distro maintainers do important and often tedious work. Upstream can either be hostile to this situation or try and accommodate it, I know which way I would prefer.
Upstreams have in the past tried to force a rebrand by way of trademark law. I'm not a fan of this, this is confusing to users and extra work for downstream, and rather hostile. Imagine if every upstream did this.
I do however think distros should point their users at their own bugtrackers and such of course.