Being sad reading the GNOME reschedule announcement in this 1st April 2011, I think most of people missed a very important point. That part is: We are particularly encouraging module proposals from alternate desktop shells, which will be given careful consideration.

After, talking to the GNOME release team, I'm really happy to see that they are considering now alternative desktop shells and I'm particularly excited to see a new area of cooperation with GNOME. I'm looking forward to see all those interesting discussions about unity. ;)