funny, aaronl...didn't know that the Debian sawfish package linked with gnome:

bma@kalgan [~]: apt-cache search sawfish
sawfish - a highly configurable window manager for X11
sawfish-gnome - GNOME components for Sawfish

bma@kalgan [~]: grep-available -F Package -s Package,Depends sawfish

Package: sawfish-gnome
Depends: gdk-imlib1 (>= 1.9.8), libart2 (>= 1.2.0), libaudiofile0, libc6 (>= 2.1.2), libcapplet0 (>= 1.2.0), libdb2 (>= 1:2.4.14-7), libesd0 (>= 0.2.16) | libesd-alsa0 (>= 0.2.16), libglib1.2 (>= 1.2.0), libgnome32 (>= 1.2.0), libgnomesupport0 (>= 1.2.0), libgnomeui32 (>= 1.2.0), libgnorba27 (>= 1.2.0), libgtk1.2 (>= 1.2.0), liborbit0 (>= 0.5.0), xlib6g (>= 3.3.6-4), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.3), sawfish (= 0.30.3-helix7)

Package: sawfish
Depends: imlib1 (>= 1.9.8), libaudiofile0, libc6 (>= 2.1.2), libesd0 (>= 0.2.16) | libesd-alsa0 (>= 0.2.16), libglib1.2 (>= 1.2.0), libgmp2, libgtk1.2 (>= 1.2.0), libjpeg62, libncurses5, libpng2, libreadline4 (>= 4.1), librep9, libtiff3g, libungif3g (>= 3.0-2) | giflib3g (>= 3.0-5.2), xlib6g (>= 3.3.6-4), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.3), librep9 (>= 0.12.1), rep (>= 0.12.1), rep-gtk (>= 0.11)

Don't see any GNOME stuff there... except in the OPTIONAL gnome components package...do you?

Forking stuff like this is such a waste of time and effort... why not try to deal with it maturely by corresponding with the maintainer?