A Vast Majority Of Linux's Input Improvements Are Developed By One Individual

[cynical]

Had Canonical just focused on Gnome, it would've been in much better shape years sooner.

I mean you are obviously assuming that Gnome developers would agree with and accept their contributions, but if that were true, they never would have created Unity in the first place.

You know I was saying the exact same thing myself, right? The entire basis behind my argument can be summarized as "fragmentation occurs when people have goals that others do not agree with" (implying when people have the opportunity to, which is very easily possible with FOSS software).

So the solution for Canonical should have been what? Conform to whatever Gnome wanted?

[schmidtbag]

I mean you are obviously assuming that Gnome developers would agree with and accept their contributions, but if that were true, they never would have created Unity in the first place.

Are the Gnome devs known to turn down commits? Has Canonical not submitted bug fixes? Because I imagine they would, and that those would be accepted. Any patches or small features that aren't accepted, Canonical could just apply to only Ubuntu downstream, like they always do. Even that I don't prefer, but at least it's not reinventing the wheel, using parts of the wheel they already had.

[stompcrash]

Wow, it seems he's been working on this for a very long time. I think it was him I conversed with over email even before 1.0 when there was some obscure issue with some device I have, maybe the Logitec Trackman Marble FX. I don't remember the code being too hard to understand at the time.

[cynical]

Are the Gnome devs known to turn down commits? Has Canonical not submitted bug fixes? Because I imagine they would, and that those would be accepted. Any patches or small features that aren't accepted, Canonical could just apply to only Ubuntu downstream, like they always do. Even that I don't prefer, but at least it's not reinventing the wheel, using parts of the wheel they already had.

They did exactly what you said, only applied features downstream. They just happened to be a lot of features. And yes, Gnome devs are well known for turning them down. They even turned down a proposal from both Ubuntu and KDE for appindicators a while back. (not that I care, I don't like indicators) So even with two out of the main three DE's trying to create a standard, Gnome preferred to go their own way. I'm not even saying they are wrong to do that, just that it is hypocritical of you to say it's ok for Gnome to do whatever they want with their DE while criticizing Canonical for doing the same thing.

[schmidtbag]

They did exactly what you said, only applied features downstream. They just happened to be a lot of features. And yes, Gnome devs are well known for turning them down. They even turned down a proposal from both Ubuntu and KDE for appindicators a while back. (not that I care, I don't like indicators) So even with two out of the main three DE's trying to create a standard, Gnome preferred to go their own way. I'm not even saying they are wrong to do that, just that it is hypocritical of you to say it's ok for Gnome to do whatever they want with their DE while criticizing Canonical for doing the same thing.

You still seem to be missing the point. Canonical's solution was to perpetuate their own problem while still using Gnome in the process. What about that are you not understanding? It's fighting fire with fire. You don't solve a problem by using the very things that are causing the problem (which in this case was immature software and parts of Gnome itself).
That being said, you seem to be completely blind to the fact that Canonical wasn't making their own standard. They were mooching off of someone else's, and twisting it in a way that only caused fragmentation. Had Canonical started fresh (even if they continued to use GTK3), I wouldn't have criticized them.

So no, I'm not being a hypocrite. I don't care much that Canonical made Unity, my gripe is why how they went about doing it, and even more that they abandoned it.