Here's a different idea about Gnome. What if the whole thing is being damaged by commercial interest? What if people are paid off to trash the whole thing? Some illumination of the idea.
I noticed that every time Linux gets a good GUI system that's almost there it runs off the rails and turns to shit. If there was a good serious stable GUI for Linux I expect it could rapidly replace windows. It can now but not without a lot of trouble.
Some examples. There was a GUI desktop called Enlightenment. It was way ahead of even windows. Very good stuff. It had some bugs but the basics were there and then all of a sudden they rewrite the whole damn thing and make no progress for many, many years.
Say you are Microsoft and you see this kick ass program full of features that would not come up until Apple does some of the same stuff later. It uses minimal resources and is fast on lightweight computers, it's free and it threatens to derail your multi-billion dollar profit stream.. OH SHIT. So you get a lawyer and he contacts the few main contributors to this desktop and they sign non-disclosure agreements. They offer them say a million a piece for maybe the top 5 guys to stall this thing for 8 years or so.
Another. Gnome is getting really good. Most things falling into place and it's rapidly becoming the desktop of choice. If it keeps going like it was then it could cause a network effect and draw in mass support and WHOOPS they rewrite the whole thing, take away tons of options and turn it into some freakish tablet interface that everyone hates. Whole thing stalls for for years and years while they screw everything up. Eventually causing forks into several different desktop GUI systems. Hmm...
Another and this is the one that made me come up with this idea because it was so damn freakishly absurd. PC-BSD. I was really liking this. It was extremely close to being a plug and play go to operating system with excellent file system. All of the unix tamed so you could use it like a normal system and then Shazam, all of a sudden they change the name to some nonsense, TrueOS(what the hell does that mean), then another name change to Trident OS and then immediately after that they completely stop using BSD as their base and switch to Void Linux. WHAT? I mean who ever heard of that? Why would you work for over a decade on FreeBSD base then all of a sudden switch to some obscure Linux? Total bafflement. Makes no sense at all. Their excuse was that FreeBSD was not moving fast enough but FreeBSD had all it needed to be a great desktop. They even wrote a great window manager and LOTS of supporting software and then abandoned it.
Now I can't prove anything but this last switch with PC-BSD really made me think that they just paid some people off and torpedoed alternate OS development. It was so bizarre. I mean if they were going to move to Linux why not Debian for which there's massive support?
I can't blame the guys. I mean you toil away on free software and live like a scrub and along comes someone with suitcases of cash and to get it you just have to do ...nothing. Stop doing what you were doing and fiddle around for a few years. Hard to turn that down. I wouldn't.