[ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!

[Who]

In summary of my response

1. This plan aims to begin to set up clear leadership structure in a
team: having team leaders who ARE in charge of there theme (if you
like design and are experienced, please lead a team). By being NOT
default we gain a lot of freedom (but we still have to follow the
Ubuntu rules about timing and deadlines)

2. You explain that an LTS will be used by many people. I agree, and
that is why producing more than one theme is a good idea.

3. We shouldn't get hung up on being the default theme. We gain
freedom of design by NOT being default, and we can still reach many
people (Epiphany team doesn't stop because Firefox is deafult... Why
should we ONLY concentrate on the default theme)

4. You say there are many good themes around. This is true, but it
takes someone to collate them, pout consistent elements together and
package them for Ubuntu. A theme team leader can do this!

SorinN: Can you clarify: were you suggesting we DO or DON"T try and do
our own community themes this release?

On Jan 5, 2008 2:54 PM, Nemes Ioan Sorin <nemes.sorin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I personally take this Civitas Forum in a semi-serious mode.
> Why ?
>
> I put here on this community some questions - in time - and I add some
> points in discussion.
>
> Responses, generally - just disappoint me. Where I talk about serious
> problems such a programmatic way to rethink UI elements design - giving
> some examples, other peoples respond me they don't like the color of my
> example [ where the color was not the problem on topic ] - so I see some
> discussions are done in parallel - some peoples talk about something -
> other peoples understand everything else -> so being parallels they will
> not meet in the next gazillion of years. [this is not about Ken - I
> observe Ken has a good background, knowledges and leader qualities -
> this is good ].
>
> So regarding your question Sebastian - I am designer - I respect my job
> rules - for some applications I have to design custom graphics for form
> elements, and UI. I do Plex WT theme for XP few years ago.
>
> I can design elements for a new Ubuntu theme. But also I see here some
> talented guys that can do the same. Not a single problem here with
> designers. But with decision power.

This process aims to put the decision power into the hands of the
people that know they can do it - like elsewhere in free software we
are asking people with ability to step up and make the decisions.

Obviously, this comes at the expense of being the default theme, but
being a community theme in an LTS release still has significant user
impact.

Realistically, I believe we can only expect to have _significant_ and
serious design control or influence of _community_ themes - especially
until we prove the team can be organised enough to work WIHTIN
Ubuntu's schedules and produce high quality work. THEN we can talk
about affecting Ubuntu's default.

>
> How I can help when I say "the things should be on this way(....), from
> Usability point of view" and other one after me will say "no, you're not
> right" ...so where my expertise can go ?. Is not important that I have
> some experience with this kind of things. Anyone will say NO and the
> problem is solved.  ...waste of time, believe-me Sebastian - until the
> decisional mechanism is solved. Right now anyone is equal to anyone.
>

Theme Teams give clear leaders, and the leaders can set out people
below them with other responsibilities. Ken has to report to Mark and
has a bunch of constraints on him that stipulate how he must
work...what he can do... In a way I think that community themes DON'T
-

Kwwii - can you comment on your thoughts here? You know better than me!

> This is the perfect terrain for the entropy rules (sad joke).
>
> For example shadowh511 said :
>  > I think of a clean, simple OS.  the color brown
>  > represents cleanliness and simplicity, while blue represents sadness and
>  > fear.  If we want to have people download hardy, why not give them a
>  > nice theme such as union and give them the desktop cube and the wobble
>  > windows and all of that eye candy
>
> How could I can take this seriously ? Regarding colors - the problem is
> solved before we born - so when he "think", some peoples could affirm
> precisely where the problem is. Also a lack of maturity ->
> "why not give them a
>  > nice theme such as union and give them the desktop cube and the wobble
>  > windows and all of that eye candy"
>
>  From his point of view all problems are solved with some wobble and
> some eye candy. That's all. No problem with the enterprise user - which
> has other rituals / values - no problem that Ubuntu must penetrate
> there, eyecandy and wobble will solve all... even healthy problems maybe.
>
> Well - this is a complex product with long term effects. But some
> peoples want just to see how their dreams come true - not important if
> this is in benefit of all (or almost all users) or not.
>
> Also we not need a theme - there are a lot - we want to do "default
> Ubuntu theme" (with minimum 3 color variations). That's the point. Hardy
> will be LTS.

We won't be able to do that this time around, I believe. Even if we
would, there is ONE default theme and MANY people on this team with
creative skill and energy - it just doesn't make sense for them not to
be working on imporving Ubuntu just because they won't be the default
team.

Does the epiphany team give up because Firefox is default, or Koffice
because OpenOffice is?... No,

> Hardy will go on enterprises and offices.
> That mean thousands of peoples with vary ages.
> Hardy is not just for few peoples with free time. This theme must cover
> a social demand - to be easy received by all that peoples / to be easy
> to work with / to be visually pleasant.
> To be clean, useful and distinctive for Ubuntu.
> This is not so easy to obtain - anyhow some proposals will not go too
> far with diagonal stripes on the scrollbar OR semitransparent buttons
> (on scrollbar on others sides) - at least corporate users will hate that
> because affect the look focus - also those stripes does not represent
> anything if favor of "clean" principle, being from start a complication.
>

I think this is a perfect explanation of why more than one theme is
important! We want to make sure that we have a good, clean,
recognisable default - and Ken will make sure the team has as much
input into that as is possible - but it doesn't end there. We CAN do
more!

By making extra themes we can serve more of the different groups that
might be using the LTS release

> Here must be a distinction about how we like and what is good. But this
> mean maturity and professionalism - not just "I like this - I think that
> ..and so".
>
> Professionalism mean clear states in every domain "Yes and No" not "I
> think this could be.. " or ".. Maybe...", or with states as "Me, then
> Goethe...".

I agree, we need a higher level of discussion on this list :)

>
> So when I'll see a clean Idea in which I can believe OR when I'll see a
> structure where I can collaborate [anyhow you need to create a
> decisional structure - democracy, democracy but until when ?] - be sure

Please, if you have comments on how we could achieve this make them
here on or the theme team wiki!

If you think you can create a team that functions well, please start a
theme team and run it!

> I will participate with work and knowledge - on the mean time I am
> member of other Ubuntu teams and I have to fill daily bug reports and a
> lot of other stuff ...
>
> I will put some considerations about the Ubuntu 8.04 default theme in a
> later (maybe tomorrow) mail. We will see after that.
>
> Good luck - best wishes for everyone - and ..be minstrels not kings guys ;)
>
> SorinN
>
>
> Sebastian Billaudelle wrote:
> >   Well said!
> >
> > I think that many people don't take us (you?) seriously. The current
> > theme is years old...
> > Nobody uses the default theme (except of me, I think...).
> > If anybody woullead a team, I would join in. (I could do things like a
> > new GDM-theme...).
> >
> > Let's fight;-)
> >
> > Am Samstag, den 05.01.2008, 11:23 +0000 schrieb Who:
> >>  All,
> >>
> >>  On my schedule for this (potential) process, today was the day to
> >>  decide whether or not we wanted to do this. Very few people have
> >>  answered... Please answer.
> >>
> >>  As it stands, with one suggested theme and no leader for it, we can't
> >>  go ahead. There is just no point. Is there any support for this idea,
> >>  or are people only here because they want to design the default theme
> >>  (serious question, not an attack! ...please answer)
> >>
> >>  In summary, here is why I think it is a good idea to do this
> >>  * If you want your design to be available to Ubuntu users, this is the
> >>  only certain way to do it
> >>  * In the past, this team has had most success developing community
> >>  themes (my opinion, but see below)
> >>  * If we want to be taken more seriously as a team in the future,
> >>  getting good stuff done well without offiicial hand-holding is
> >>  important
> >>  * Developing these themes is fun, seeing people using your theme is great
> >>
> >>  But if we don't get people able to run them/do design we can't go
> >>  forward. It is only sensible for me to drive a process like this  a
> >>  certain amount (i.e the leaders need to want to do it!, and do does
> >>  the team)
> >>
> >>  It occurs to me that if we can't even make a complete theme of ANY
> >>  style to a good standard, we shouldn't expect to be taken seriously
> >>  when we ask to design the default theme!
> >>
> >>  Happy answering,
> >>
> >>  Who
> >>
>
> >>  On Jan 3, 2008 9:59 AM, Frank Schoep <frank at ffnn.nl <mailto:frank at ffnn.nl>> wrote:
> >>  > On Jan 3, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
> >>  > > To all the new people around here - please pay attention to Who, he
> >>  > > has been around here for a good while and knows the drill. …
> >>  >
> >>  > Absolutely – there are a few people on this list who've been around
> >>  > for quite some time. I think this list is very fortunate to still
> >>  > have experienced people like Who and Troy around, but it's also good
> >>  > to see a lot of new enthusiastic people sharing their vision.
> >>  >
> >>  > > …
> >>  > > We came close to the real deal once, was it Dapper?, where we got a
> >>  > > few community themes, bundled, but not enabled, by default.
> >>  >
> >>  > I think you are referring to Edgy, as the Theme Teams were introduced
> >>  > in that release. Eventually three themes ended up in universe, being
> >>  > Blubuntu (Who / PingunZ), Peace (Chuck Huber) and Tropic (Viper550).
> >>  >
> >>  > While varying in quality and polish, the mere fact they were included
> >>  > was a sign that independent small community groups could work towards
> >>  > their own vision *and* meet the hard deadline constraints that were
> >>  > set for them.
> >>  >
> >>  > > This happened solely because of two things:
> >>  > >  * A few people stood up and took responsibility for creating themes
> >>  >
> >>  > Indeed. There was a deadline for Theme Team applications a few weeks
> >>  > into the release cycle so that the theme leaders needed to be
> >>  > involved from the start up through a few weeks before release. For
> >>  > Edgy, four leaders stepped up with a serious proposal.
> >>  >
> >>  > During the development period, we regularly discussed progress and
> >>  > problems and where possible I tried to help out either myself or by
> >>  > getting the right people in touch with each other.
> >>  >
> >>  > >  * Daniel Holbach saved our asses with a lot of packaging work we
> >>  > > really should have done our selves
> >>  >
> >>  > Daniel has historically helped out with a lot of packaging work,
> >>  > indeed. For the Edgy Theme Teams, we made sure he only had one final
> >>  > version to package per theme with room before the deadline, so they
> >>  > wouldn't burden him much.
> >>  >
> >>  > > I think it would be very valuable to have a "History Page" on the wiki
> >>  > > outlining the success and Failures of the art team. That would
> >>  > > probably help to make it clear how we are doomed to repeat history
> >>  > > unless people step up an take responsibility.
> >>  >
> >>  > While I can't say much about Feisty, Gutsy or Hardy-in-progress, I
> >>  > could tell you about Edgy. As far as I know, Edgy was the first (and
> >>  > last?) release to actively try and use community input as a viable
> >>  > source for distribution artwork.
> >>  >
> >>  > Postmortem I did an interview with Linux.com on the Edgy cycle, and
> >>  > there's some half-decent comments from Slashdot, too:
> >>  > http://www.linux.com/feature/58477
> >>  > http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/14/2241255
> >>  > ('Stroep' [sic])
> >>  >
> >>  > It seems that all the history we built on the Wiki has been shoveled
> >>  > elsewhere or been dumped in a landfill altogether, but if you can
> >>  > find it, you might be able to reconstruct a decent timeline along
> >>  > with the mailing list.
> >>  >
> >>  > It was pretty high traffic during those days (July - October 2006)
> >>  > and the ML / Wiki combination seemed to work somewhat satisfactory.
> >>  >
> >>  > All in all, Edgy was edgy to me – as you can read in the interview
> >>  > the idea was to try something new, community artwork by default, and
> >>  > since there were no trodden roads available I did my best to get and
> >>  > keep things rolling in an enjoyable fashion.
> >>  >
> >>  > I think it worked out pretty well in terms of community involvement,
> >>  > enthusiasm, commitment, process structure and raw output. Slightly
> >>  > missing was the desired art *direction* but somehow I don't think
> >>  > that problem's been resolved ever since, no flame or offense intended.
> >>  >
> >>  > If you'd ask me now, sure I'd do things different based on the Edgy
> >>  > experience and the knowledge I've accumulated since then, but I think
> >>  > the Edgy cycle already showed a lot of potential for the future
> >>  > although it never got tapped into afterwards.
> >>  >
> >>  > Tell me if I'm wearing rose-colored glasses, thanks for reading.
> >>  >
> >>  > Sincerely,
> >>  >
> >>  > Frank
> >>  >
> >>  >
> >>  > --
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> >>  > ubuntu-art at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:ubuntu-art at lists.ubuntu.com>
> >>  > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
> >>  >
> >>
>
>
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