I&#x27;m very involved with (lately less so, been busy) and IMO you&#x27;re pretty accurate.<p>Some more details: Replacements for autotools often only handle the simple case. Widely known that autotools is difficult, however, the replacements cannot do what the GTK autotools is used for at this moment.<p>For the compiler: I think the Microsoft compiler is holding us back? Further there are two important parts: glib is used almost everywhere, so you have to be very strict in what you accept. GTK+ should be more easy going. They did add that support for (IIRC) automatically freeing variables.<p>Tied to Red Hat is very unfortunate. However good willed, it is better if there is a group of similar sized companies. I&#x27;d wish there were more (free software) companies the size of Red Hat.