GNOME 46 puts Flatpaks front and center

So... how about you apply that same sophisticated analysis to what Gnome has done?

(Especially noting the difference that having actual non-exclusionary F/OSS competition brings?)

Keep in mind here that the person I was initially responding to was lamenting the lack of originality (versus simple mimicry) in F/OSS offerings. The responses to GNOME doing just that (with v2 and especially v3), including your responses on this thread, demonstrate the absurdity of that statement.

*every* platform out there (commercial or F/OSS) holds strong opinions on its user interaction paradigm. Sometimes those opinions change, and drastically at that, from one major release to the next. For example, in the past 30 years, The Windows UI paradigm has seen at least three major overhauls (Win3->Win95->Win8) with more minor/evolutionary ones with each successive release. Gnome has done something similar (G1->G2->G3). XFCE has gone through at least two, as have Android and MacOS. Meanwhile, the first-party software from the commercial platform vendors themselves is usually by far the worst offender when it comes to violating the native platform UI guidelines -- take-it-all-or-leave-it UX-is-everything Apple is probably the worst (serial!) offender, and they're routinely lauded for this attitude.

So, I stand by what I wrote; Gnome has been heavily criticized for both mimicry and originality; they're going to get grief no matter what they do. If you want "mass appeal" just do a 1:1 clone of Windows (or maybe Android) , or better yet just use Genuine Windows (or Android) to begin with. Or Gnome can instead build the software/environment they want, and the folks who like it can use it, and everyone else can freely choose to use something else.

(And if you genuinely don't have a choice in the matter about using Gnome, it's because your employer mandates it along with any number of other things you give up in exchange for a paycheck. Welcome to Life.)