Please don’t theme our apps

The whole letter sounds weird when talking about free software. Software freedom main benefit is that the user can change the software. Theming it is probably the most accessible form of modification and should be celebrated. Asking not to theme is contrary to the free software ethos itself. The situation is even more tricky as what is being modified is not even the software itself but the system dependencies. Essentially the developers in this letter say: do not run our…

https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1433088460655452162 I don't know why lots of developers have chosen GNOME/GTK to build their own desktop environment (Cinnamon, Solus, PopOS etc) but at this point, it's pretty clear that GNOME/GTK developers don't care one bit about them. They want to control their apps and their ecosystem and don't want anyone telling them what to do. GNOME/GTK is heading toward Google's open source model of "look but don't touch". Anything that doesn't conform to their way is a "hack"…

Completely antithetical to free software. If I want to modify your code or the environment it runs in, I will. Gnome is not an OS or a "platform", it is free (as in freedom!) software to be used and tied together however the users, distro authors, ansd whoever else feels like. Writing and publishing open source software then trying to guilt trip people into interacting with it at arms length and subject to condiions like closed source, proprietary software is…

Half of the reason that I enjoy using GNOME, KDE, and other distros is that I can theme the entire system for a relatively consistent experience. I enjoy having system apps all be the same configurable color theme and even design language with flat themes and material themes becoming popular. Layouts might be a bit much, but themes are a key part of the user experience.