"The path the GNOME community took to this proposal is somewhat
complex. When the prospect of GNOME 3 was first discussed by
developers in 2005, the concept took on a life of its own among the
users who imagined that it would be an audacious reinvention of the
desktop with completely new interaction paradigms and a new kind of
user interface. This pie-in-the-sky vision was referred to as
ToPaZ, word play on the phrase three-point-zero."