I'm in the same boat. Trying to negotiate with GNOME developers only got me laughed out of the room, now I couldn't care less about what they think. They promised to kill sacred cows, and all we got was this lame desktop that gutted 90% of the things I liked about GNOME 3.38. Luckily, it doesn't look like we need to wish it failure much these days. I don't know many people who use GNOME since 40 (much less any developers on it), and compared to the KDE development roadmap their progress is utterly lethargic. If anything, it's a project that is sustained by a few paid contributors from Red Hat and a miasma of third-parties who have some vision of GTK and GNOME converging into an Apple-like platform.
There actually are a good number of paid contributors from small companies, and also a good number of volunteers too. That's what I have seen.
Don't feel discouraged if your first contributions didn't make it in, GNOME is a big project so I'm sure you could find some other areas to contribute to if you really wanted. Keep in mind that core areas such as the shell and GTK are probably bad places for first time contributors as they tend to be very complex, it's best to start with a smaller app/library and go from there. Of course if you don't want to contribute then you don't have to either, but I think all of this applies to most large open source projects that I have seen.
I'm not mad that my patches were rejected, the GNOME team is notorious for neglecting basic functionality like thumbnails in the filepicker for almost two decades, even with literally hundreds of pull requests with suggested fixes. I'm mad because the current maintainers have no interest in extending the discussion around what GNOME should be. For all their talk of inclusion and diversity, their attitude runs in the complete other direction. They're encroaching on the same issues that systemd made, where their software's scope is expanding way too far with far too little substance. I've been told to "not bother" making apps that I don't plan to distribute via Flatpak. I've been told that disliking Adwaita is paramount to fascism, and when I try to reason with people and explain myself I get told to read the Code of Conduct.
You're painting this out to be a personal issue, which it isn't. The culture among GNOME developers is one of the most toxic I've ever seen, and it's continuing to poison a desktop environment I desperately want to love. Every time I suggest something I get shut down though, so why bother? Why would I willingly hurt myself in the process of trying to make a usable desktop? The only thing I can do now is share my experience as a warning to other developers who want to make Linux-native experiences: GNOME does not want your help, don't waste your time trying.
Sorry to hear that but I think on some level it is personal. I have never experienced any of what you're talking about, everyone I've talked to has been pretty respectful and open to collaboration. It's a large project so experiences may differ, we may not have ever interacted with the same people, or you may have caught them on a bad day, etc.
On those individual things, you can certainly make apps outside flatpak although on a technical level I think that flatpak (or a similar packaging mechanism) is going to be the best option for a great number of apps, and I would expect that to become the focus for many app developers just because it's a lot easier and saves time. I think that comment about Adwaita is pretty inflammatory and may be seen as being against the code of conduct, not sure, but it certainly isn't my view and I doubt it is the view of the majority of contributors.
"neglecting basic functionality like thumbnails in the filepicker for almost two decades, even with literally hundreds of pull requests with suggested fixes."
I mentioned this elsewhere but I'm very disappointed to see this issue get continuously brought up, I don't think there is much we can say that is productive at this point. I've never seen a pull request from this that was actually finished to completion. Is there someone in particular you're waiting for to approve this? If so, can you think of something that could help them out? Or do you think they don't want help at all? Because from my perspective, that is not the case.
Edit: Also, hundreds of pull requests to implement thumbnails? Is that an exaggeration? I'd like to see a list of all of those if possible.
Keep in mind, it's not unusual for a large patch to go through many revisions before finally making it in. Take a look at the Linux kernel for another example, you don't have to look far to see many patches that take a long time to go through review or just never make it in because of various reasons. I don't think you are being fair by painting this as a GNOME behavior, it is simply reality on large projects with a lot of complexity and moving parts. It sounds like you are also saying systemd suffers from the same issues (it probably does) but unfortunately it seems that is another area where it's a complex problem space, so that's the trade-off that you make.
I'm making an honest offer to reach out and help and correct past wrongs, I am sorry if it's patronizing, if you want me to do something else then just ask. I'll be here if you change your mind. Please understand that if you refuse to take anything but complete agreement for an answer then it is going to be very difficult for anyone to help you, I can relate to your experiences but I'll never be able to experience them fully myself. So in that way, the ball is in your court.
Don't worry about my project, I'm only commenting here to help you and to explain that those other opinions are not shared by everyone. In fact commenting on social media is usually a waste for my projects as it only seems to attract more negative/toxic comments from people who (incorrectly) assume that I share all my opinions with an upstream project or something like that.
