Gentoo packagers always claim GNOME has a dependency on systemd. It has a soft requirement for some things, not a hard requirement. E.g. ConsoleKit is not maintained anymore, so it either wants ConsoleKit or logind part (is e.g. used+packaged separately on Ubuntu!!).

I've said this on the Gentoo development list. The only reply is "but I want the features systemd provides so I call it hard dependency". It is really telling to want systemd things and complain about it at the same time.

There is no API/ABI breakage in minor versions, you/someone pretended there was. Further, you could write programs which worked in the latest 2.x versions and 3.0. Misrepresentation of facts.

Explain which command already!

Such as? All these claims are very unspecific. Kind of annoying. And still, is it really a problem? Any package system can deal with that easily. E.g. I have both installed, I have used various distributions, yet never come across this seems like you're searching for problems.

That is not in 3.x (3.0 / 3.2), that is between major versions (2.x vs 3.x). 2.x existed for 10+ years. At the end of 2.x you could write your programs in such a way that it will run on 2.x and 3.x. Arguing over lack of API stability, while still 2.x versions are being released plus this is the first API change in 10+ years, think your expectations are a bit off.

That is not true. The only changes that are invasive is for themes. However, that is due to the move to css for themes and once that is done, it'll be easier to theme things. So aim is not to make things difficult, but unfortunately to make things easier it sometimes is more difficult temporarily.

I don't have RHEL. Libraries do NOT have the same names. GTK+-2.x and 3.x do not have the same names, same for various other things.

I do have Firefox, it uses GTK+-2.x, it runs fine in GTK+-3.x. Sounds more like some missing dependencies in your Gimp package.

Can you give a reference to where you found that GTK 3.x wouldn't provide backwards compatibility? This as it should.

What do you mean? You should be able to run gtk3 run fine on any distribution. It doesn't matter one bit if that is some Qt based distro (KDE/whatever), some Gtk based distro (whatever version, 1.x, 2.x, 3.x) or whatever else.

GNOME 3 is not incompatible with GNOME 2 on a library naming level. Suggest to do some research about the various libraries used within GNOME instead of repeating incorrect statements.

A personal opinion is different than speaking for a whole community.

Freedesktop is just a bunch of developers at KDE, GNOME and a few other desktop environments. You got almost everything wrong, then conclude 'assholes'. Just sad really.

And you can use CSS as well :)

You're posting AC for legal reasons?

I help out in GNOME, and don't see anything that you mention happening. I find it interesting that you mention that you worked in Microsoft, the GNOME community as well as KDE. Though I do not care which company someone works for, I think I'd at least remember.

Pretty sure you're saying the same thing, but just to make things really clear.

From http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/Membership:

The release team is not directly elected, but should be representative of the GNOME community. Membership is normally by invite and recommendation when one person leaves. In theory, the GNOME Foundation board has the power to select its members and influence its decisions, but they usually don't fix stuff if it isn't broken. Not more than two release-team members can directly or indirectly have the same affiliate (similar to section 2.d of the GNOME foundation bylaws).

Red Hat did not place anyone on the release-team. Matthias Clasen was invited. The only way Red Hat made that happen is because 1) Matthias rocks 2) he works for Red Hat. I think this matches with what you wrote, but just want to make it really clear.