Previously generic types couldn't be compared correctly, since we'd end up with false differences like "Dictionary`1 != Dictionary<string, string>". That seems to be fixed now, possibly due to the PDB file being included.
The mod metadata has grown over time, and there's no need to keep it in memory after mod loading. This lets us load the config earlier (since it has a smaller impact on memory usage which affects the game's audio code), and lets us discard the mod metadata when we're done with it.