Has anyone taken a poll from the Fedora Community as to what new directions Gnome-X should be taking BEFORE making such a paradigm shift? Were this a
Are they paying customers, do they have support contracts ?
commercial product, you will hearing from your customers who otherwise will drop the product (gnome-3, that is) and seek solace elsewhere. IMO, the peanut-gallery started with Gnome-3, not Gnome-2.
Fedora is not a product with customers. Quite what Red Hat Enterprise customers have to say to Red Hat down the line when/if it becomes the desktop of whatever their next product is I don't know.
It seems to me, a LOT of work went into Gnome-3, with the expectation that the Linux community will have to have it ramroded into their throats, mercilessly water boarded without resistance, and their screams silenced...
It's very hard to force people to take anything in the free world. Windows 8 you will get the desktop delivered as defined by MS. In the Linux case well if you don't like it run something else.
In the case of business users I doubt many use Fedora for that, and those using RHEL, CentOS etc will have five odd years to ponder the question anyway.
I do think there is a problem with the Gnome development model and its unwillingness of many of its developers to accept external input as anything but criticism of them personally. The foundation-list is currently involved in a fascinating example where many of the developers are attempting to block and stonewall a third party survey of desktop users and their interests. It reminds me of the behaviour of failing governments that are about to implode before an election is forced - a complete total denial.
I shall continue voting Xfce 8)
Alan