Well I didn't say they didn't have every right to do it. I just think that it would be more considerate of them to negotiate with the other players. When I say that they don't "own" Gnome, I mean that they're not in change (yet, at least) of the Gnome ecosystem as a whole. Making a move like this is going to cause developers to have to pick sides between distros.

If they really want to fork Gnome, just be honest and say, "Gnome sucks, we're forking it and calling it "Gnomebuntu".