While GNUstep is a powerful environment for developing applications, there are still some issues with certain window managers. As well, GNUstep applications do not always work well with non-GNUstep applications.

The freedesktop.org project was formed to address interoperability issues between desktop environment. The focus of this project is to ensure that GNUstep follows as many freedesktop.org standards as possible, without sacrificing any of GNUstep's features.

This project will begin with an assessment of freedesktop.org standards and software in order to determine which ones should be supported by GNUstep. However, some initial ideas include:
- EWMH hints
- XDnD
- reading .desktop files (e.g. for NSWorkspace's -openFile:)
- startup notification
- XSETTINGS (common desktop settings like double-click speed)