Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

> Impossible? Ha. We're talking about software. Besides, MATE demonstrates otherwise.

I think the point was that the rest of the GNOME team didn't have the time or inclination to do the work that the MATE team did, not that this work was literally impossible. There is a real question as to whether the GNOME team could have done more to absorb or recruit the new developers who ended up making MATE so that GNOME would have had the resources to ship both versions simultaneously, but there may be more fundamental political disagreement that would prevent this collaboration from happening. There is also the possibility that this couldn't have been done in a non-disruptive fashion because the motivation to maintain GNOME2 wasn't there until distros starting shipping GNOME3 in large numbers to disgruntle enough developers to do the work.