What is the ethics of making a fullscreen window manager (for use on tablets or HTPC) that uses Cinnamon components?

[pugly-tech]

like say hypothetically someone was to make a bare bones tiling window manager designed for easy use on tablets and HTPC (computers hooked up to a tv that get navigated using a remote or gamepad) but it basically uses cinnamon components like the start menu and panel applets for everything (so installing it would effectively require installing the full cinnamon desktop enviroment), is there a way to do so that is compliant with licensing terms and programming etiquette?

A potential best case scenario is if this window manger (you can problably guess the name but i wont say it) becomes part of the linux mint codebase, even if that means relinquishing control over it. it has to prove itself first though.

[cplittlfield]

My understanding is that this is common in the free-and-open-sourced software world. For example, the LM window manager used by Cinnamon is Muffin, which is a fork of Mutter. Likewise, Cinnamon itself is used in a number of non-Mint distros. Furthermore, the core Linux utilities used in almost every distro were all developed by GNU to provide the same functionality as their UNIX counterparts. So practically every distro incorporates software written by others.

Some of what's allowed depends on the license. For instance, the GNU Public License allows free use of software, but requires that any changes made to the source code must be contributed back upstream. Other licenses in the FOSS world have different requirements.

[pugly-tech]

Fair enough, I do have a bit of a learning curve ahead of me, to the point where I know i'm not asking the right questions.

Generally what I want to do is make something that can be used a a htpc interface (with tablets being secondary but related enough to work on concurrently) which would be used to launch fullscreen media and gaming applications like Steam, Kodi, Emby, Netflix etc which are designed for navigation using a remote (likely an airmouse) or gamepad, and switching applications and navigating can be done using the remote and gamepad in a way that is intuitive. So I need to make something that pretty much only displays a single app at a time in fullscreen with no window dressing, but has easily accessed menus for switching and launching applications and accessing applets like volume control and wifi. I figured the most intuitive way would be by using the hotspot corners, where clicking the bottom left brings up the start menu and list of running apps, in a layout that makes directional pad navigation easy.