As many people (including me) dislike the MATE prefix on the package names (as they are used on Xbuntu now and maybe Unity soon), we need a way to solve the package craziness problems.
I say in 18.10 or some version not LTS, MATE-* are meta packages. The real packages should have “m” as the prefix (for MATE but not too intrusive).
This might not happen and I know this but if it does happen could allow more distros to use MATE packages instead of GNOME
For the most part, this is almost true already. Packages that start with mate-* are part of the desktop environment itself and either need MATE or are needed for MATE to run. The rest of the applications don’t have the prefix: pluma, caja, atril, mozo, etc…
edit: I just realized you might have meant the application names, rather than the package names. Fair point. It could be interesting, for example, if you have the MATE System Monitor, for it to show up as “System Monitor” if you’re using MATE, but as “MATE System Monitor” if you’re using a different desktop/shell. It would probably only work within the MATE-specific menus, which can just parse out the MATE prefix (and maybe even add prefixes to other conflicting applications, like Files, rename it to Nautilus or GNOME Files).
I did mean the package names AND the application names.
What I mean is packages like “mate-calc”. It doesn’t need MATE to work and can confuse a beginner using Xbuntu for example.
Also there was a talk about using MATE applications for the Ubuntu Unity remix on the Ubuntu Dev forums. For the same reasons, this could be confusing for a beginner or someone that doesn’t know that Unity now uses MATE applications and not GNOME.