There's such a thing as too opinionated (and it's coming from someone that likes opinionated).
I extensively use Gnome but I think it might be time for me to consider switching.
This ain't just hobby stuff anymore. Businesses are catching on and using it, and so they're entrenching an older, stinky, take-it-or-leave-it way to do software, and what's worse, they're doing it on the back of a free-software-spirited labor.
It doesn't violate the letter of the GPL, but it sure as hell violates the spirit.
No it doesn't. The spirit of the GPL is essentially "do whatever you want with this as long as you keep distributing the source code." That's it. It says nothing about paid products or development style or keeping a certain style or direction or anything like that. The GNOME developers decided to change direction themselves, as the GPL says anyone can. It would no sense for them to give up their trademark to MATE when that was just a random offshoot that no one had any idea of whether it was serious or how long it would last. It's not even that active now, can you honestly say they would have benefited any more from having the GNOME name?
Like, come on my guy, you're flogging a horse that died more than a decade ago. You can continue this substance-free criticism of open source projects for as long as you want, just be aware that you get out what you put in.
You seem to grossly misunderstand what "spirit" means here, because you described the letter.
>the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users
And that part's still the same. You can share and change it as you wish.
I believe this is the likely root of the problem. Commercial developers who don't personally use GNOME at home and only only work on it because it's their job. The incentive of these developers is to keep GNOME minimal from their own perspective as developers, to make their jobs easier. They don't really care about GNOME users (despite their contrary rhetoric) and neither does their employer (Red Hat, etc). Their employer funds this GNOME development because they still sell workstation licenses or support contracts to big corps and workstations need a GUI environment that's viable from the point of view of salesmen, CTOs, and contract lawyers. GNOMES's style of user-hostile minimalism satisfies all these corporate interests.
You're acting like this is a bad thing but that's how open source is supposed to work. Every contributor works on their area of interest. For companies, they work on what helps their customers. There's a practical limit to how many users any contributor can support because developer time is a finite resource. With many contributors it's supposed to average out over time into something more general use. However the Linux desktop has historically been very bad at attracting a lot of corporate contributors. That's not specific to GNOME and it has nothing to do with corporate interests, plenty of other desktops are even more minimalistic and hostile to design changes.
The GNOME project is a massive undertaking and completely free. It's written by volunteers, sponsored developers, and commercial developers who derive their revenue from elsewhere. They own the trademark, so of course they're going to use it.
The bottom line is that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people happily use GNOME every day (yes, I'm currently one of them). I did _not_ care for legacy GNOME, and back then I chose something else (usually dwm and xmonad).
I really don't see what this fuss is about. There is a vast selection of alternative desktop environments and window managers to choose from. Get over it.