I don't see how these questions are related. Those are businesses. Volunteer open source projects aren't businesses. There's no barriers for anyone to join the project and start changing it from the inside. And they're specifically set up so you don't have to boycott them when disagreements happen, you just fork the project.
>There are a bunch of barriers, you don't have to go far to see people asking if pull requests would be welcomed for a particular feature.
That isn't a barrier and you don't need to do that. You just implement the feature in your own fork. I can tell from this you're not a developer because this is a common confusion. When you ask for a pull request you're not trying to get through a social barrier. You're actually asking someone else to do you a huge favor by taking time out of their day to review your code for free. And then if they merge it you're also asking them to maintain it for free and fix future bugs in it for free. Normally you would have to pay to get other developers to do that.
>but it is a business
No, this is false and you're getting confused again. Some businesses can contribute by volunteering their employees' time, but that's different from the project itself being a business. The project itself (as in the collection of all the contributors) isn't deciding what those people are paid or what they work on. The project itself doesn't have the customers or answer to them, the business does and that's a separate entity both legally and functionally. Do you see how this is fundamentally different from a business?
>I don't think it gets a pass just for being open source, any more than the linux kernel or Wikipedia does.
A pass on what, exactly? You're coming back to this combative language again, please stop.
Gnome is a business, same as Wikipedia. They have a charter and a board of directors and almost one million dollars in revenue in 2020. Lot less in 2021 though, and I don't see any newer reports (I'm not looking in depth right now).
>A pass on what, exactly?
Criticism, in the same style as you'd criticize any business, or at least Wikipedia.
So I ask again, what guidelines would you give for criticizing companies like Adobe, wizards of the coast, Wikipedia, the linux foundation, etc?
>You said "changing the project from the inside", which a fork isn't.
Yeah, it is. The inside of the project being the code. You just fork it and change whatever you want. What else do you think that means in the context of software?
>Gnome is a business, same as Wikipedia
No, GNOME and Wikipedia are both non-profits. They're not businesses. "Business" usually means a for-profit company. In both GNOME and Wikipedia, the money is mostly all going to administration costs and costs to run the servers. Currently no GNOME developers are paid by the non-profit, and Wikipedia editors aren't paid either. Ask any of them and they'll verify this. I think you're confused as to how most non-profits actually operate.
I haven't said anyone gets a pass on criticism, I'm not sure why you're pushing that point. I don't think you should throw bad, low-effort angry criticism at businesses either. But open source projects aren't businesses, so I can't answer your question because it doesn't make any sense. Please ask a different question or rephrase it.
My original point was your criticism is lacking in substance and it needs to improve, and also your anger is misguided and unhealthy. I get that you're passionate about open source so that's why I'm explaining it. GNOME is just an open source project given away for free by community volunteers, it's not a business. They can't see you're upset and just charge you a hundred bucks to send customer service to your house to fix whatever missing thing you have on your computer. The anger is just going to go nowhere and rot, it's your responsibility to channel your energy in a productive direction, like actually being respectful and convincing people (with solid facts about design and tech issues) that your way is the right way.
