Published at LXer:

Those who remember a time before Ubuntu will undoubtedly also remember that GNOME, although probably the second most popular desktop manager, didn't hold too much share of the Linux desktop market. KDE was king, and GNOME was a distant second. Then Ubuntu appeared and not only climbed its way to the top of the distribution game, but brought GNOME with it. Polls over the last few years have shown its use increasing to the point that it is oftentimes equalling or out-ranking KDE. But what will happen to GNOME now that Ubuntu 11.04 is going to ship with Unity?

Read More...

I agree with this article: Ubuntu and GNOME are significantly different projects. Just because Ubuntu is at the top doesn't mean that Red Hat or any of the other companies will leave the project. In most cases, the amount of code that Ubuntu is trying to contribute to GNOME, I agree, is being rejected because many Red Hat employees are key developers of the GNOME project (with the exception of maybe the maintainers, Federico Mena Quintero and Miguel de Icaza). Other than market share, I don't see anything else about GNOME declining.