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And I mean that not as a dismissal. Standards on many things are nice. So is exploring all of the area left open by the standards.
I think it is an open question on whether or not we could have more standards around what a desktop environment should/could be? Unfortunately, I don't know that there is a company in a good position to build out new standards, at the moment. Most of the big companies are largely content to work alone in their world. Maybe build up a sandbox that keeps developers there.
What I am not okay with is myriad of linux window managers which are 99% the same generic window manager. How much effort is being split between KDE/Gnome despite them being essentially the same thing? How much effort was wasted in unity?
Now, again to your point, we are all on the same roads. Such that standardizing parts is incredibly valuable.
I /think/ the trap is that standards often act as constraints on the manufacturers. And software is a large industry where constraints are easy to effectively ignore during development. Memory requirements. Safety from malicious actors on the system. Capabilities of different computers. I could probably go on.
I suspect it is worse than that sounds, even, as developers tend to focus on the intrinsic quality of code thinking that is paramount. I hate that sentence, as it makes it sound like I don't think the quality of the code matters. I fully think it does. I also fully think we fall for aesthetic quality of code far more than we do any other quality.
Not sure if you were there but this was way worse in the 1990's when Linux was still very young. Every person and their dog wrote a window manager (I know I wrote a shitty one) and until GNOME & KDE there was no DE to standardise around at all.
At least we have 3 or 4 fairly fully fledged desktop environments now as well as a 1000 different window managers.
1) Take all developers interested in desktop environments, ask them to collaborate and come up with one (1) desktop environment that suits everybody's need
2) Let developers who want to experiment with their own desktop environment, do so, with the hope that at least one experiment results in a decent desktop environment. The ones that want to collaborate can do so
(3) Take all developers interested in desktop environments, ask them to collaborate and come up with one (1) modular desktop environment that allows everyone to develop/choose the basic modules they want. For workspaces, windows, docks, and any other window arrangement and quick access features.
I would love being able to select different window managers, different docks, etc., for different workspaces. The best arrangements for each task.
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Thinking bigger, I want persistent named "worksets" of workspaces, that can be arranged, closed, reopened together. One workset at a time, or multiple.
It would help to be able to have the same docs and tools open in multiple windows, with different placements and sizes. Think the same Word doc open and editable in two different workspaces but with different window sizes and placement.
I would optimize worksets for every crafting area, development projects, and work task, etc.
I expect I would end up with dozens of worksets. So the workset opener should be allow for hierarchical organization.
Yup. That's it. That is what I want!
But here you are already assuming that all these developers want to have a modular desktop environment. Not everyone wants that, or workspaces, or docks or whatever.
So yeah, if everyone wanted the same thing, I guess we could end up with one desktop environment that covers everything everyone wants. But (fortunately), the world is more complicated than that :)
Those that don't want a modular environment just use the defaults someone else has created.
Modular doesn't mean you are forced to customize. You can still just choose/use your desktop setup as a single decision.
It isn't about hegemony but rather a free marketplace of ideas and philosophies that gives its users a depth of choice between desktops and configurability within desktops that you can't find in any other operating system. So with your philosophy the "year of the Linux desktop" has already happened and is continuing to.
In other words it's ok for people quit obsessing over low market-share and instead enjoy their freedom.
* Not entirely true... there are certainly commercial offerings and financial backing for the ecosystem, though I'm certain it would still exist without them.
I don't actually think that is ever happening, and I'm totally fine with it.
You do it wrong, let me show you how it's done. <-- The concept I mean.
It's easier to branch or create your own project instead of finding middle ground.
Why it is hard to take leadership of the desktop on Linux? There's lots of crappy, buggy projects. They differentiate themselves on meaningless, non-functional experiential things like theming specifications, what programming language you write so and so functionality in, the licenses, etc.
The tiny audience of "undecideds" in the Linux ecosystem adopt stuff for stupid reasons. Meanwhile normal people are obviously happy to use macOS. To copy macOS and deliver what those people need, you need millions of dollars of product development every year. You'd have nothing to show for it year after year. So it's very hard.