TheEvilSkeleton

> There is one main reason I can think of. GNOME is the most used desktop environment, therefore it is the most susceptible to gain demands and pressure from users and companies.

Being the biggest isn't cause enough for this perception.

GNOME, in the past decade, put itself in a remarkable position of prioritizing a perpetual-neophyte persona, who did not & didn't want to understand computers, and rebuilt the product around that persona. For a corporate desktop, where random people are handed GNOME & told they have to use 1 app or maybe 2 or 3 on a computer, this is perhaps reasonably well calibrated. Look at many who fund GNOME Project, and this vision makes sense. But GNOME is a Linux desktop environment, and they have Linux users, and it turns out this chosen persona GNOME Project fixated on doesn't only not line up very well, it actively rejects the premise of supporting the explorer, the tinkerer, the hobbyist, the learner. GNOME Project is quite literally the most visible open-source project on the planet, yet it has the most actively anti-open behavioralism & targeting of probably any open-source project. It's chosen a bounded mission, a narrow one, with incredibly bounded behaviors, and that runs counter to the open-source spirit of possibility & exploration.

> If you dislike the GNOME Project’s philosophy, then the solution is to simply not use GNOME.

In case you missed it the first time the author said it, the author comes back to re-confirm: GNOME is "my way…

> See: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-fla...

Everything in that reference basically says "yep the criticism is valid" and in a few cases the author expands on that with "but it's ok because..." and then lists various reasons why it's fine that it's still a problem but that's it's being worked on. They also had to correct a good chunk of just outright incorrect information they were supplying mid-post about system updates.

One item was addressed, which was that flatpak now notifies the user that sandbox escapes are possible based on the app's configuration.

As a response to the criticisms, it's not a great one.

Consider also, there are better ways that some of these issues could have been tackled. Why not have flatpak prompt for permissions as they're used, e.g.: "This app wants to open your home directory" rather than at install-time. That would make it abundantly clearer to the end users this is aimed at.

Flatkill is full of misinformation or no longer true information. There're many posts debunking most of their points [1]. Some parts were true a few years ago but aren"t anymore.

For example if VSCode wouldn't have direct access to the file system, it would be unuseable since it doesn't support portals to ask the user to grant it access to specific folders (by selecting them through the file picker).

In the process of packaging an app for flathub, the packager has to provide some reason for why for example full file system access is necessary. The discussion to add or remove permissions are always open [2].

[1] https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/02/11/response-to-flatkill-org.html

[2] https://github.com/flathub/net.lutris.Lutris/issues/229

Not if those "improvements" go against the desired grain by gnome/etc maintainers.

If I'm not misremembering, the gnome team is especially notorious for being closed to changes that go against their desired design goals.

Trying to get changes upstream like what the parent was suggesting would be somewhere between arduous and impossible, let alone being a pain to implement.

Edit: case in point: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2023/01/05/on-the-gnome-project-and-my-way-or-the-highway.html