> Is that why they're so unresponsive to user needs?
It's because Wayland is a set of protocols, rather than a single dominant implementation.
In order to do it right, cross-compositor and flexible, you have to get different actors with different interests and bandwidth agree on a standard. This takes time.
In order to get it working fast, developers need to make a compositor-specific implementation first and then put in the extra work of getting it through the standards discussion as well as switching their compositor ecosystem to the new standard.
Until this happens with all parts that you care about, you're going to be annoyed either about interoperability or functionality. Pick your poison, and cue Moxie's "The Ecosystem is Moving" blog post. Also, keep using X11 until Wayland has the features you want. Most DEs/WMs haven't ripped out X11 support yet, and hopefully won't until their support of Wayland protocols is solid enough.
I acknowledge that the Wayland team is not responsible for the implementation decisions of the GNOME team.
However, the Wayland team is responsible for the set of protocols that they've developed and that they've asked others to implement. The Wayland team has failed to define protocols that are flexible enough to provide basic functionality that users expect, even if they were implemented perfectly.
This should not be a process that depends on individual developers building compositor-specific remote-desktop tools first, then praying that someone likes them enough to put it in the standard. Wayland built the standard, they just built an insufficient one.
>If the Linux kernel had worked the same way, we'd never have gotten Linux.
Yes we would. In fact it's exactly how Linux works and has worked for decades. New features get added in drivers and then get rolled up into driver subsystems when enough hardware supports them.
It's because Wayland is a set of protocols, rather than a single dominant implementation.
In order to do it right, cross-compositor and flexible, you have to get different actors with different interests and bandwidth agree on a standard. This takes time.
In order to get it working fast, developers need to make a compositor-specific implementation first and then put in the extra work of getting it through the standards discussion as well as switching their compositor ecosystem to the new standard.
Until this happens with all parts that you care about, you're going to be annoyed either about interoperability or functionality. Pick your poison, and cue Moxie's "The Ecosystem is Moving" blog post. Also, keep using X11 until Wayland has the features you want. Most DEs/WMs haven't ripped out X11 support yet, and hopefully won't until their support of Wayland protocols is solid enough.