There are quite a number of dependencies in symfony/framework-bundle that should be optional.

1. symfony/asset

Don't need it when building an app without GUI.

2. symfony/security-core

Don't need when I don't want to include any sort of access control

3. symfony/security-csrf

Don't need it unless I have forms. Which is an optional requirement in the form (pardon the pun) of symfony/form. Even if you keep security-core, this should go unless you have symfony-form.

4. doctrine/annotations

I may not want to use annotations.

5. symfony/translation

I might not care about translations

6. symfony/stopwatch

Why is this not in require-dev?

7. symfony/templating

Again, without a GUI I don't really need this.

Anyone sharing this opinion or should I create my own symfony-minimal-framework-bundle if I want something less 'standard distribution'-like?

Possible solution would be extracting the other deps into something like symfony/core-framework-bundle and have symfony/framework-bundle depend on that. Then packages depending on framework-bundle would not suddenly have to deal with missing deps.