> You seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings about what is happening here.

Upstream devs want to control what down stream devs are doing to their code/configs that are under the GPL and the downstream are doing a crummy job at it? What is to not understand? An open letter signed by a bunch of people saying 'dont do this to our code' sounds like they want some sort of control. They gave away that control.

> No, this is not an "unfinished theme" for the specific app. This is a default theme that is being applied to every single app by the distribution.

That sounds broken and unfished to me. I do not see it as anything but not finished. If 'bugged out' suits you better then just use that term. If the distro spent more time making it all look right that would be finished would it not? Distros do this all the time to packages. I have dozens where I have to go unbork a broken package because of what the distro did or neglected to do.

>"Upstreaming" doesn't make any sense in this context.

Why not? They are making changes then shipping them but not contributing it back. It would make it easier on everyone else. But they want to keep their 'secret sauce' is my guess or lack the will to do the proper work to upstream it.

>You say you see both sides here, so perhaps you can explain why it makes sense for distributions to risk breaking apps with untested default themes without informing the user just to ensure that apps in the OS look similar.

They can totally do that. It is what most distros do to differentiate themselves from other distros. Some distros are bog standard no changes others have all sorts of tweaks to make their distro special. See something like an Arch vs RedHat. Arch is closer to 'no real changes other than recompiled for your machine and rolling release' whereas RedHat touches everything to make it special. This is usually considered a feature in the linux world.

That they are shipping broken themes is on the distro. As per the GPL again. The originators of the package are asking for a 'hey fix your junk'. That may or may not happen. The distro packages are under no obligation to fix it. They probably should but that does not mean they will. I have some distros I use where the packages are 3+ years out of date. Because no one maintains it.

You seem to be deliberately ignoring that GPL covers all of the files in the package. Including preconfigured items. That would include any preconfigured theming. The GPL does not really make that distinction. It is border line a 'you touched it last' style of working. It is one of the reasons people created CC licenses to make that distinction and what is the expectation.

I am not saying it is right or wrong. I am saying they are within their rights to do it. Why would they risk doing that? No idea. It is not something I would personally sign my name to. I would guess time, money, or lack of understand or a combination? Gnome would just be better off naming and shaming them and saying 'xyz distros are breaking our code be careful'.

That Gnome is saying 'please stop' is probably because they are getting all sorts of noise from broken distros. Put that at the top of your forum and say 'if you are coming from distro XYZ we may or may not look as they broke it here is a link to the distro forum'.