GNOME 2 was my bread and butter. It's absolutely my perception that GNOME devs have gone "drunk on popularity" at the time (or perhaps more precisely, drunk on power), and still are.
GNOME 3 would absolutely have not been pushed as the future of GNOME so unilaterally if the lead devs showed any restraint or signs of listening to their users, given how much initial outcry there was. Given that they announced they may be dropping X11 support in GTK5 (!) [1], I argue they are still drunk to one extent or another. X11 is the GUI server that most desktop Linux users use as of 2022! Have an ounce of respect for your users, and at least ask if that's what people want / are comfortable dropping.
I get it, it's their project. But if a good chunk of the Linux userbase uses your software, then it's good to at least ask if people are OK with the direction being taken.
>GNOME 3 would absolutely have not been pushed as the future of GNOME so unilaterally if the lead devs showed any restraint or signs of listening to their users, given how much initial outcry there was
I really doubt that. MATE exists as a continuation of GNOME 2 and it is just not very popular. The users who care about such things seem to be a very small minority.
>X11 is the GUI server that most desktop Linux users use as of 2022!
This is not the issue. The issue is the number of developers who are interested in working on the X11 support in GTK is shrinking. If there are no developers to actually work on it then it simply cannot be done, what the users use is not relevant anymore.
>Have an ounce of respect for your users, and at least ask if that's what people want / are comfortable dropping.
>if a good chunk of the Linux userbase uses your software, then it's good to at least ask if people are OK with the direction being taken.
There is no point to asking this. If you ask most users whether they want you to continue doing free work for them indefinitely, of course they will probably say yes. There is a contingent who never wants anything to become deprecated just out of principle.
GNOME 3 would absolutely have not been pushed as the future of GNOME so unilaterally if the lead devs showed any restraint or signs of listening to their users, given how much initial outcry there was. Given that they announced they may be dropping X11 support in GTK5 (!) [1], I argue they are still drunk to one extent or another. X11 is the GUI server that most desktop Linux users use as of 2022! Have an ounce of respect for your users, and at least ask if that's what people want / are comfortable dropping.
I get it, it's their project. But if a good chunk of the Linux userbase uses your software, then it's good to at least ask if people are OK with the direction being taken.
[1]: https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/05/gtk_5_might_drop_x11/