I sympathise with that.
However, GNOME is one of two de facto alternative standard desktop environments, along with KDE.
For an application to garner significant support and credibility, the ability to integrate with one or both of these desktops is important.
I do feel that application developers should, where practical, offer a version of their application that can be installed without support for GNOME/KDE. Abiword does this, for example; you can install it with or without GNOME support.
As use of Linux and UNIX moves into the mainstream, though, I think the trend will be towards applications that either support GNOME/KDE or they don't; the option won't be there, and the applications that do not support one of the two major DEs will become marginalised as developers migrate towards applications with more mindshare and users.
I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that GNOME routinely breaks on incremental upgrades—but that's a different discussion.
I thought you'd just be happy with any old DE as long as xterm still worked, anyway, Ben :-)
