Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Well, then the "core OS" can include glib; I don't think it's worth getting too worked up by some idea that glib belongs "higher" up in the stack. If it's needed by some "core" component, then so be it. If GNOME, KDE, or some other (set of) packages requires a different version of glib, they can use a separate version (say, a different so version number or by using RPATH).

I suppose, in general one could (and should?) argue which packages/libraries should or should not belong to the core. But I don't think arriving at some consensus on this matter is the biggest hurdle for this approach, but rather getting buy-in for the general idea.