The responses from GNOME members were quite enlightening. Really shows the level of respect they have for anyone besides the in club.
This is why I don't maintain free software, and God bless those who do.
Looking at the project maintained by the front-runner of this movement, it has had 5 total reported issues in the last year, none of which are related to theming, so I'm not sure I understand what the big support struggle they're chafing at is either.
Default applications! On one of the two major desktop frameworks in Linux!
Oh I'm sure what you're working on is so much more important.
Still seems weird to not share your opinion...
Anyway, since you asked:
> If you don't want people to theme your software (or rather, you don't want your software to be themed by distribution maintainers), why not write your own license forbidding just that? No one will want to touch it with a 10 foot pole, but hey, you won't have distribution maintainers theming your software.
This is just... Well let's just say it's you that doesn't understand free software. First off changing the license to deal with this is like solving a problem with your business by nuking your competitors from orbit. It's way way way too heavy-handed an approach.
Second, I dunno if you've ever actually worked in software before, but the people churning out the features, in this case the themes, more often than not don't really have a say in what they're building, even in the case of open source. Opening a public conversation like this is exactly how you solve this kind of problem. It's a democratic commons. Talk it out. There's no one person you can just email and say, hey, this is hurting us, knock it off.
You're basically just telling these people to shut up and take it. You don't care about their needs, or what they're going through every day. They make a website like this to stand up and be heard, and they hear your voice, hey, you over there, you're out of your lane, shut up and code.
It's... an immature response. The kind of immaturity that makes me believe that explaining why past the most basic observation would be an exercise in pissing upstream.
[1] https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue...
> Just because something is technically possible and not illegal doesn't mean it's not a dick move
[1] https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue...
Sounds reasonable to me.