GNOME Calendar developer Hari Rana has publicly revisited a months-old dispute with Linux Mint, accusing the distribution of harming upstream projects by shipping outdated and modified software while continuing to use upstream branding and support links.
In a strongly worded blog post, Rana described Linux Mint as a “hostile distribution” and provided his account of a GitLab discussion that began back in September 2025 and was closed several months later.
The initial request concerned the GNOME Calendar packages distributed by Linux Mint. Rana said the upstream project no longer supported any of the versions held back by Mint and asked the distribution to remove or replace links pointing to GNOME Calendar, particularly its support links. Additionally, he also requested that Mint change the application’s icon and branding.
According to Rana, users of these older packages sometimes report problems directly to GNOME Calendar. Upstream developers then spend time investigating issues that may already be fixed in newer releases or may be caused by downstream patches and packaging decisions.
The branding request, however, made the dispute more complicated. Removing upstream support links from an unsupported package is a practical measure. Demanding that the application also receive a new name or icon raises a separate question about how freely licensed software may be modified and redistributed.
Linux Mint founder Clement Lefebvre explained during the discussion that Mint’s package versions are connected to the Ubuntu and Debian releases on which Linux Mint and LMDE are based. Removing Mint’s package would therefore not necessarily give users a newer GNOME Calendar version, as the same older release could still come from the underlying distribution.
Unfortunately, the conversation quickly became confrontational to the point where Lefebvre replied, “If you don’t care, then neither do we,” apparently referring to Rana’s dismissal of Mint’s downstream constraints.
Lately, Lefebvre closed the GitLab issue, arguing that upstream appeared to want tight control over how its software was distributed.
“Upstream wants tight control over the distribution of its software. This probably requires GNOME Calendar to move away from free licenses. Closing since this an upstream consideration.”
The practical solution would have been relatively simple: Linux Mint could replace the upstream support links with its own and make it clear that reports concerning its packaged version should first go through Mint’s support channels. That would reduce the burden on GNOME Calendar without requiring the application to be renamed.
Instead, the discussion ended with both sides talking past each other. Mint treated the request largely as an attempt to control redistribution, while Rana treated Mint’s resistance as proof that the distribution was exploiting upstream developers.
In any case, however, the underlying problem is real. Stable, long-term-support distros often continue to ship application releases long after upstream developers have stopped maintaining them. Users may not understand where responsibility for those builds lies, especially when the software still points them toward the original project.
For additional details, see the full discussion here.
I think the problem with Mint is they are using Cinnamon which feels very outdated and slow, sure it uses less memory than KDE, but it feels slow on interaction and doesn’t look very good. Fonts and readability look very bad on it.
The Gnome Calendar they use is outdated, but a lot of components in Mint are outdated too. If they have a problem with it they should just ship Mint with a different Calendar program instead. I can’t wait for Cinnamon to become a modern DE, but I doubt I will ever see it.
IMO the upstream does not simply want their gnome calendar in Mint at all, they don’t want to find a solution, meet at the middle they just dont want “Linux Mint” specially to use gnome calandar.
https://gitlab.com/linuxmint/pins/mint/gnome-calendar/-/work_items/1
By reading this ticket I have a clear understanding of the issue. Clement Lefebvre Linux mint lead developer have been very resonable, linux mint does not decicisively choose the older packages, packages in linux mint comes from ubutntu. Its a shame to see this divide between upstream and downstream still after all this long long. This division is also no 1 reason why linux is not mainstream. They could have easily come to a middle ground if Hari Rana the gnome calendar developer was a bit reasonable. I’m just disapointed.
Mint , in case of Gnome, represents the old style where the deskop keeps in the background if I got it right.
problem with going forward is that it often turns out to be backwards.
Dont copy WillInstallNeedlessSoftwareOverWholeSystem. personally I use Linux to get away from them 😉
I took the time to read the whole discussion. This article doesn’t do it justice. It’s between some 24 year old, that has no idea how the world works, and the project lead of one of the most popular Linux distributions.
The whole premise is absurd. Stable distributions like Debian has been around for decades and they have always shipped outdated software, to be able to provide stability. Now there’s some kid that has volunteered to maintain the GNOME Calendar and thinks that gives them the power to dictate how their software is distributed. It’s ridiculous.
Bug reports should have the version, and our of support versions can just be immediately closed.
Flatpak is not without issues either, e.g. Flatpak is considering a major systemd requirement. Regardless, I don’t think this solves the quick turn-around problem for the distro, or the user for that matter. Maybe, if GNOME cares, GNOME should consider LTS versions, like the linux kernel does?
GNOME had a great run! I enjoyed using this DE in the past for its simplicity (not for sacrificing functionality for the sake of “simplicity”). Good thing Valve ditched GNOME and moved to KDE. As for Linux Mint, don’t even know where to start. Why didn’t they stick to Debian instead of Ubuntu LTS? lol
GNOME doesn’t need an Ubuntu-style LTS version. The software cycle is about moving forward, not stagnating. Look at the damage Ubuntu and your LTS experiment did to the Linux ecosystem. The Mint team simply needs to edit the support links instead of sending users to upstream. Or, in the best-case scenario, migrate to Flatpak and shift support directly to the application developers.
I use Mint 22.3. The version of GNOME Calendar that ships with the distro is 46.1. I think a simple solution would be to replace the .deb package with a Flatpak. Flathub has version 50.0 of GNOME Calendar. I’m guessing that Mint doesn’t want to go down this road (including Flatpaks as part of the basic distro).