Why not reusing more GNOME components?

[Matthew Brush]

On 14-08-28 12:45 PM, Sébastien Wilmet wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Xfce is a complete desktop environment. Including a session manager, a
> settings manager, applications, etc. It is a quite big codebase to
> maintain. And Xfce still uses GTK+ 2.
>
> GNOME is also a complete desktop environment, but has more developers
> and progress more quickly. Most of the GNOME applications use GTK+ 3.
> And there has been good progress on Wayland support, among other things.
>
> So, Xfce could reuse more GNOME components. For example just keep the
> Xfce panel and maybe the window manager, and integrate that with all the
> rest of GNOME (session, settings, applications, etc etc).
>
> Because developing a complete desktop environment is a huge task. It is
> a pity to duplicate efforts.
>
> I think people use Xfce mainly for the desktop (panel and workspaces,
> not the whole desktop environment). They don't care about how the
> session, settings etc are implemented. Some people use Xfce because they
> don't like gnome-shell, but they don't care whether Xfce is lightweight
> or not. Features and usability are more important.
>
> So, why Xfce still develops a whole desktop environment? I know every
> developer is free to work on what he or she wants. And it would be
> difficult to abandon some piece of software that you worked on during
> several years or more than a decade. But for pragmatic reasons, reusing
> a GNOME component is probably easier than developing and maintaining a
> similar component in Xfce.
>
> What do you think?
>

Flame bait :)

Did you send this email to the Unity, Mint, MATE, and LXDE development 
list too? Probably the same answer for them applies to XFCE.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush