Several open source projects do this, I use Hyprland and it does the same. These are community supported projects made by unpaid volunteers for your benefit. It’s definitely not the same.

@Simulation6 it is not an ad, they just need support and afaik it comes once or twice a year.

for anyone getting caught up in this shallow bait rhetoric, one is a case of:

"please stay entrenched in our shitty software ecosystem so we can continue to treat you as the product"

and the other is a case of:

"please donate to us to help us develop this free and open source software"

the two experiences are similar but in no way equivalent.

Annoying. I'm on xfce and would switch if they do that.

Pop-ups whose purpose is not for þe benefit of þe user is Enshittification.

GNOME have long time lost the plot.

That they're opposed to users reconfiguring it was a huge clue.