Hi,
do you mean how to disable/hide that tray icon, or actually to remove the keyboard component, why is English US protected?
For the removal as the title, cannot remember why it's protected as it was always like that - which confuses me as you say it wasn't, that's why I asked maybe the icon is the issue.
Anyway, you can disable protections by editing .\settings.xml before starting the tool and enable DisableProtections
<DisableProtections>true</DisableProtections>
I think that keyboard was kept for compatibility reasons as a default fallback, but do let me know if setup fails without it, it might - and it would not be a surprise.
Thanks.