Comment 4 for bug 405426

Big issue to keep in mind: By simply stripping the icon, this kills the ability to access the window menu with a left click, which could be a big regression - needs some checking to be sure.

Otherwise, I suggest that this NOT be changed within themes unless there is solid reasoning to do so. Instead, the change could be achieved by editing the defaults in gconf for /apps/metacity/general: the button_layout key could be changed from "menu:minimize,maximize,close" to simply ":minimize,maximize,close".
(Having a GUI to configure that would be beautiful, too, but somewhat out of scope of this papercut)

Meanwhile, could I suggest experimenting with a left-aligned title in the Human theme, as is done with Impression? With nothing else on the left side, it could look quite striking. Center-aligned titles aren't common (or good looking) in many places, so why do it for the window title? Again, somewhat out of scope of the papercut, but it seems a natural next step :)