You may have recently seen an article from GNOME on the subject of client side decorations (CSD) titled Introducing the CSD Initiative. It states some invalid assumptions which I want to clarify, and I want to tell you Sway’s stance on the subject. I also speak for the rest of the projects involved in wlroots on this matter, including Way Cooler, waymonad, and bspwc.

The subject of which party is responsible for window decorations on Wayland (the client or the server) has been a subject of much debate. I want to clarify that though GNOME may imply that a consensus has been reached, this is not the case. CSD have real problems that have long been waved away by its supporters:

No consistent look and feel between clients and GUI toolkits

Misbehaving clients cannot be moved, closed, minimized, etc

No opportunity for compositors to customize behavior (e.g. tabbed windows on Sway)

We are willing to cooperate on a compromise, but GNOME does not want to entertain the discussion and would rather push disingenuous propaganda for their cause. The topic of the #wayland channel on Freenode includes the statement “Please do not argue about server-side vs. client-side decorations. It’s settled and won’t change.” I have been banned from this channel for over a year because I persistently called for compromise.

GNOME’s statement that “[server-side decorations] do not (and will never) work on Wayland” is false. KDE and Sway have long agreed on the importance of these problems and have worked together on a solution. We have developed and implemented a Wayland protocol extension which allows the compositor and client to negotiate what kind of decorations each wishes to use. KDE, Sway, Way Cooler, waymonad, and bspwc are all committed to supporting server-side decorations on our compositors.

See also: Martin Flöser of KDE responds to GNOME’s article