Day: Status Icons and GNOME

I didn't even speculate on why GNOME is a default option on many distributions. If I did, it would probably be along the lines of poor choices by KDE, the prior popularity of GNOME 2 (inertia being a powerful force), and some peoples beliefs that version 3 must be better than version 2 because 3 > 2. I'd also speculate that the popularity of MINT is mostly because of Cinnamon and that GNOME Shell still seems less than universally loved.

What I meant to say:
1) At least some core GNOME members see GNOME as a place for experimental design. At least some core GNOME members see GNOME as culturally disruptive. This seems pretty well documented, although perhaps not the view of all core GNOME members.
2) At least some core GNOME members desire to see GNOME as a default or the default Desktop Environment. This also seems well documented.
3) My personal opinion (which might be a small minority opinion for all I know) is that trying for both an experimental desktop and being _the_ mainstream desktop is at best inconsiderate to users.

Obviously different people may have different opinions than me as to why GNOME is frequently a default and different people may have different opinions on the appropriateness of having an experimental and mainstream desktop.