There's Gnome the window manager library and there's Gnome the "Graphic Environment" the shell and related applications (Gnome-shell, Nautilus, etc).
Gnome the window management library would make a great thing to put within a tighter GNU. It is the basis of Xfce and Ubuntu Unity as well as the Gnome Shell. Taking the underlying library out of the current tug-of-war over interfaces between these environments would be nice. And I realize there's also the Gnome 2.0/Gnome 3.0 issue in libraries but I'd say a more neutral umbrella would still be useful.
Unity also uses compiz instead of Mutter. He was talking about gtk and the support libraries, where you split off Gnome Shell the desktop and leave gtk the toolkit.
> It's that GTK, or the rest of GNOME for that matter, doesn't seem like a good fit for GNU.
Why?
I vaguely agree about GNOME, who are often rather insular and sometimes do things that are of dubious wisdom for the GNU project (e.g., their on-and-off love affair for MS "standards").
However, GTK is something very different indeed. Even if GNOME has grabbed control (or tried to, I dunno the details) of GTK, GTK predates GNOME, was created by different people, is used by a far wider community, and even has a very different feel. At its core, GTK really is just a good UI toolkit; GNU needs a good UI toolkit, and GTK seems to serve that purpose very well.
Indeed, to the extent that GNOME has taken over GTK development, it reflects GNOME's good points (and do I think technically GNOME is often fairly good).
So if there's going to be some sort of distancing of GNU and GNOME, I'd rather see this accompanied by GTK becoming more independent of GNOME as well—not to "screw GNOME" or anything, but to ensure that it continues to serve all its users well (by "users" here, I mean "projects which use GTK", of which there are many, most of which have no connection with GNOME at all).
[It would be fine it the same people continue to work on GTK, but there should be a clear line between it and GNOME.]
The point is that GNU is not promoting Gnome, but GnuStep. And Gnome goes against everything the FSF and GNU stand for, so I never understood why they are keeping it under the GNU umbrella.
They can throw out Gnome and just keep GTK and glib, which are more widely used, independent projects not under Gnome's control.
There's Gnome the window manager library and there's Gnome the "Graphic Environment" the shell and related applications (Gnome-shell, Nautilus, etc).
Gnome the window management library would make a great thing to put within a tighter GNU. It is the basis of Xfce and Ubuntu Unity as well as the Gnome Shell. Taking the underlying library out of the current tug-of-war over interfaces between these environments would be nice. And I realize there's also the Gnome 2.0/Gnome 3.0 issue in libraries but I'd say a more neutral umbrella would still be useful.