[snip long rants]
The "customers" of Fedora are the users. If you irritate or frustrate your users, especially if the cost is $0 to move to something else, you WILL lose market share and hence mind share.
Additional data points that might add to the flames:
1) I have a co-worker new to Linux. He tried F15 and hated it, then went back to F14. I believe WinXP/Vista/7 users trying Linux for the first time ARE confused by F15/Gnome3.
2) Other friends/co-workers have moved to Ubuntu for their desktop and only use RHEL/CentOS for servers (No Fedora).
3) It took me hours to get my F15 laptop sane including finding obscure settings to turn on the minimize in windows, and a working printer configuration application.
These are the reasons why only one of my Linux-based laptops/netbooks/desktops is F15 and the rest are F14 or Ubuntu.
I hope to try Fedora 16 alpha soon. I hope that most of the major objections to Gnome 3 in F15 have been addressed and that developers have listened to the complaints. I plan to remain a loyal Fedora user as I have used RHL & Fedora since about RHL 2 or 3 circa 1995 (and Slackware before that).
Open source is GREAT, but developers must remember that the cost (time and $) to move from one version to another is very low....
Cheers, -- Wade Hampton