Yeah, I think some gnomers are exaggerating that a bit too much when adding a background shape should be altering the app identity. However, @mpt is correct: the only way of doing this without producing guaranteed inconsistency is to build this into either dash to dock or the shell (from the current information level I have)
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I think Samās point is that Ubuntu is no longer an āapp platformā in his view but merely a āGNOME vendorā (I had a rather lengthy conversation with him on Twitter which I canāt paste here but it gave me some more clarity on what he thinks personally, but also it seems some of this is what GNOME thinks), and thus Ubuntu, as the most popular GNOME vendor, should be sticking with upstream GNOME in general, but also in terms of icon HIG, which he sees Yaru (especially for third-party apps, as Ubuntu is no longer an āapp platformā in his view, so it makes absolutely no sense to him) as conflicting with (unlike @jbicha who sees them as compatible). He also intended his icon theme to be an option for the few users who care about changing their theme from the default, he never wanted it to be default (from what I can tell, I should perhaps paste this post back to him so that heās happy with what Iām saying hereā¦).
Sam finds forums (and Twitter) unproductive and said if I really wanted to find reconciliation I could start an email thread with the interested parties so Iāll try and do this when I get the chance and weāll see if thereās any possible reconciliation between these conflicting positions of Ubuntu/Yaru and Sam/GNOME which is possibleā¦
If we take this way, I believe we should implement the mechanism in both.
However, is the squircle so distinctive that we want to diverge (talking about the shell) for having it? Consider that it appeared on Ubuntu only in Cosmic release, since version 18.04 does not have Yaru by default.
No need @ads20000 , Iām already in conversation with the other gnome designers (jimmac and tbernard)
I didnāt say that we should make the squircle BG in the dock I just think thatās the only way of having the guaranteed consistency 
Iām more and more for dropping the Suru app icons and āonlyā keep all the rest: folders, symbolic system icons, mimetypes and so on.
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I donāt like how we canāt see what their arguments are but Iām glad Sam has made some of his clearā¦ If you do choose to drop Suru (which could be a fine decision and I think I do buy the GNOME argument that we should be going more upstream) then please either write a forum topic or a blog post (maybe via @didrocks blog or if one of you is an Ubuntu Member then you could get a blog aggregated via Planet Ubuntu and then post it to the blog) on the decision so that we know the full justification.
@mpt thanks for your contribution! 
I thought I have read in places that people donāt like how Ubuntu has modified kernels but I canāt remember where. I suppose the usual question is āwhy isnāt upstream good enough for us and why canāt we merge the changes upstream?ā Sometimes thereās a divergence in design philosophy and desires over branding etc but as a āGNOME vendorā, as Sam puts it (I suppose weāre also a āLinux vendorā), should we be having that divergence?
I think the arguments are pretty much clear from their point of view.
Their vision is to build a consistent app platform.
Ubuntus idea is a little bit different. So we need to meet a good mix for both, Ubuntu and gnome.
Which will probably be to use our theme which is very close to adwaita code wise yet provides the Ubuntu feeling but without overwriting their app ābrandingā
Which is not their preferred stance (since their preferred stance seems to be that Ubuntu goes full upstream so that we can fully promote their āapp platformā) but hopefully itās a compromise that theyāll find acceptable? Or, at least, more acceptable than the status quoā¦ Hopefully eventually thereāll be a GNOME theme API that allows branding differences but until then perhaps weāll just have to disagree with them and cope with the tensionā¦
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Yeah itās not what they prefer but it is what we prefer and it looks like what @willcooke prefers.
Also, Iām trying to make yaru a second upstream theme. Which has a very low success chance, but I will give my best to convince them
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Squircle or any other background, but not the Suru squircle, but an Ubuntu distinct squircle. Create another squircle, without touching Suru. Have a different corner radius, have a different amount of layers, or just one layer. No need of all that superimposed layers with all kinds of levels of gradients, transparencies. Windows has one colour, and everyone recognises thatās Windows. The squircle background should point to, remind people to Ubuntu brand, not Suru brand.
In Gimp, new > 512x 512 > fill in the colour > right click > select > rounded rectangle > choose your radius > select again > invert > push delete button, and you got your squircle.
Unlikely. Imagine that Google made Samsung One UI second official launcher.
I donāt believe changing the radius will make any real difference
Well, even if not, doesnāt change the very post by Will up in this thread and the fact that Ubuntu is not dropping itās visual identity.
Soooo back to the icon discussion:
Letās see when the 3.32 app stack hits disco daily how everything looks without the Suru app icons.
Maybe itās better than we imagine. As long as we keep the symbolic icons and the folders as @taciturasa suggested
Edit: Also,ā¦ thanks @ads20000 for the efforts to bring transparency to the community but if SNWH wants to communicate with us he could have done it already either in the big thread of doom (now closed) or otherwise.
Again: GNOME designers have other goals. That does not mean that they are wrong or we are right, it is just different.
Speaking of myself, I am very fine to live with that differences without bursting into pieces.
Thus Ubuntu has a dock (yay) and ubuntu has a systray extension (yay). And thus ubuntu has an own theme (yay).
We are already contributing to the upstream theme additionally to our daily Yaru business (not much, but it could increases in the future, especially since they want to improve the upstream shell theme in the next cycle). From my private communications with tbernard I can say, that the issues with the Yaru theme are far less problematic than to overwrite their new app icons with a different icon.
They dream of: app developer develops his/her app including a unique icon ā app developer publishes his/her app ā user uses the app developers app (including their unique icon).
Overwriting this with a custom icon set is not what they want, thus their feedback wasā¦ rather negative 
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What if we create another extension that will insert icons into shape? I suggested this idea earlier.
I think thereās a deeper problem here, where the Gnome designers are trying to project a vision that, IMVHO, isnāt a good fit for a free and open source project like Gnome.
I understand why theyād love some top-down visual integrity. But that works better when you can use legal instruments like licensing, T&Cs, etc., to retain a necessary amount of control over what āvendorsā do with your product and how they present it.
Gnome is free and open source. If people have your permission to fork, change and cannibalise your work, Iām not sure how you can hope to achieve that product-vendor model, where your principles and wishes are respected through the ecosystem. So we see an (IMO) less-than-ideal position where Gnome designers are putting pressure on a āvendorā using informal channels like critical blog posts and tweets.
FWIW, Iām not disputing the validity of what theyāre trying to do; just the wisdom of trying to do it with a free and open source platform. IMO, embracing a vive la diffĆ©rence philosophy is necessary if youāre going to work under a licence where you cede control. Itās like releasing an animal into the wild and then trying to keep it as a pet. Thereās nothing wrong with releasing an animal into the wild, and thereās nothing wrong with having a pet. But I question the wisdom of trying to do both with the same animal.
My opinion, as above, is that your licence should be an honest statement of what youāre happy for people to do. If someone takes a FOSS component off the shelf, they shouldnāt have to worry this much about upstreamās design principles, or their hopes for how the ecosystem will evolve. Surely, half the appeal of FOSS is the fact that you can diverge from upstream to follow your own vision?
I guess, speaking purely for myself, the recent developments here feel like a bizarre juxtaposition of proprietary-style wishes with free and open source licensing. Itās like a basket of apples with a sign saying, āHelp yourself to these apples! Do what you want with them! Sell them if you like!ā - and someoneās stood next to the basket, pressuring people about what they should or shouldnāt do with the apples.
The Gnome website says that Gnome is Free Software and links to the definition at GNU, whose āessential freedomsā include the right to "change [the software] as you wish" and ādistribute copies of your modified versions to others.ā
This includes the right to āuse your changed version in place of the originalā and states, furthermore, that āwhether a change constitutes an improvement is a subjective matter. If your right to modify a program is limited, in substance, to changes that someone else considers an improvement, that program is not free.ā
I donāt know how there can be this much contrast between the licence for a project and the hopes of its contributors. When it comes to your work, if someone has these freedoms, they arenāt really in a formal product/vendor relationship with you. But the GNOME designers have created an atmosphere and narrative where itās become, at the very least, politically awkward for Ubuntu to try to replace the upstream icons, because theyāve made it clear that they disapprove.
Again, as previous, all completely IMO.
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Oh yes, it does. This thread has to be read again, from top to bottom. It took me few days to go through that long thread, but it was a treat.
And, the result and further. You make your own āsquircle,ā not someone elseās. You can make them in Gimp, Imagemagick or Inkscape. (Iāve not touched them for years, having fun learning now.) Thereās whole manual on Inkscape.
The Yaru team should create its own squircle and folder app icons.
No offense butā¦ Are you a bot?
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Whatās a bot? No offense any way.
Btw, Inkscape is te app that was used to create the Suru template. The result was in svg, but the icons are in png, so you canāt manipulate them.
We can make squircles in GIMP and Inkscape I donāt want to boast, but I reckon I could rustle up a hexircle or even a dodeca-dircle if the design team wanted one.
The main advantage of keeping the upstream Suru squircles (for me at least) was the nicely executed edging, optimised for the different sizes. But that goes away if Yaru switches to having the same svg for all >32px sizes, as per the latest HIG guidelines. So itās arguably moot at this stage.
Also: āif it aināt broke, donāt fix it.ā If we wanted squircles, other than politics, there would be no reason not to use the existing ones (Suru is licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike).
The problem is less where the squircles come from (or who draws them) and more whether Ubuntu actually wants them. Drawing squircles would be the easy bit.
EDIT:
āInkscape is te app that was used to create the Suru template. The result was in svg, but the icons are in png, so you canāt manipulate them.ā
No, but we do have the source svgs for the Suru icons, which we did manipulate. When I wanted to make a new Suru icon, I either started from the blank Suru template in Inkscape, or - if there was already a similar icon to the one I wanted to make - loaded it in Inkscape and started by editing it.
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I know you can. I learned something from your comments in that thread. And, from all the other guys too.
You can take them apart, and redo them, if you wantā¦or in a text editor. You can change the width and height from 512 to 48 without loss. Change the gradients and whatnot.