I think it's just a standard corporate insularness. Devs being paid to work on the software by the corporation view outsiders as a nuisance and certainly don't like outsiders giving them more work to do. They'd rather find justifications to remove features reinvent old systems to "reduce legacy cruft" (make their jobs easier.). Basically, it all makes sense if you assume standard commercial developer motivations.

Or even better - remove features and then let someone else implement them.

Or remove features and don't let someone else implement them because you don't want to add in any configuration options.

Fornunately with Free software that doesn't matter too much because anyone can add a feature and if you don't want to accept it people can go to the other person's implementation instead.

I mean, isn't that how Cinnamon and Panteon and Unity and Cosmic and MATE were born?

It's a great strategy for sure. If I were running a software company that depended on software licenses and consulting fees for income, and I had to keep my stuff open-source, then what you outlined would be the best (and really, only) strategy for long-term survivability. It's a moat, and a good one, because it's plausibly deniable.

So why don't people just stop caring what gnome thinks? Can't they just standardize the stuff regardless of gnome "holding out" on them or whatever it is they're doing? Do they need their permission or something? Just leave gnome behind. Doesn't really matter whether they catch up or not.

> So why don't people just stop caring what gnome thinks?

Because Gnome is RedHat and ...

1) Because RedHat is one of the few companies that puts sustained, long-term funding beind developers working on Linux. As such, they get an outsized say in what goes on because they are doing the work. If you would rather that Linux go a different direction, fund a bunch of programmers and take it that way.

2) RedHat put in the work, time, and money to get certified in ways that allows it to be used for big business. That means adhering to things like accessibility, auditing, etc. If you get the same certifications, big business accounts can use your stuff instead.

If you want people to ignore Gnome, all you have to do is fund a bunch of Linux developers to do all the work they are doing. Easy peasy.

Well to me it sounds like a lot of other people also put in time and effort into making Wayland better, only to be consistently blocked by gnome/redhat at every turn.

It's not the first time I see people air their grievances like that so I gotta wonder why people keep working with them. Let red hat pay the developers to take Linux in whatever direction it wants. Other developers can go in some other direction that they agree with. The beauty of Linux is the kernel enables such a diverse user space. That's what I personally care about.

gnome folks are on the committees just like everybody else is. They don't have veto power in that way over the accepted standards, only in what they implement.

They actually do that. Consensus is a goal. But if it can not be achieved then at some point people will just create a protocol anyway, even if Gnome doesn't implement it. People who claim this isn't the case haven't actually followed the space at all.

Of course issues still get stalled on this, because it takes a while to figure out that the disagreement is to fundamental. Often a compromise is actually found in the end.