Flavor Review Request for Ubuntu GNOME

[Jeremy Bicha]

Since it has been about six months since the first alpha release of
the Ubuntu GNOME Remix, I believe we are ready to ask if Ubuntu GNOME
can join the list of officially recognized Ubuntu flavors. The Ubuntu
GNOME Remix set out to create a desktop with a relatively pure GNOME
experience, now that the default Ubuntu desktop has diverged a fair
degree from GNOME in design and function. We were losing users and
developers to other distros because we no longer provided an easy way
to get a non-Unity GNOME experience. GNOME Shell has become a popular
desktop in its own right and I'm excited about the future (the new
GNOME Classic mode for GNOME Shell 3.8 looks especially nice for only
a few months of work).

All of the packages we need have been in Ubuntu since last September.
We follow Ubuntu's release cycle, having released our own beta 2 and
stable release for 12.10 on the same days as the Ubuntu project and
we've done SRUs.

- Our seed can be found at
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome-dev/ubuntu-seeds/ubuntu-gnome.raring
- Our developer team is https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome-dev
- We have an IRC channel (#ubuntu-gnome) and a mailing list
(https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome)
- We don't really have a website yet but we used the Ubuntu wiki for
our 12.10 Release Notes
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/ReleaseNotes/12.10

We are a bit understaffed but I think many of the Ubuntu flavors
suffer from that problem. I already have upload rights to the desktop
and universe sets which is mostly sufficient for maintaining our
packages. I'm looking forward to seeing Tim Lunn (darkxst) and Rico
Tzschichholz (ricotz) apply for upload rights in the not too distant
future. All three of us have signed the Code of Conduct. We don't have
a separate QA Lead at this time; I'm hoping that daily builds will
improve our testing efforts and community participation.

If our request is approved, I'd also like to change our name from
'Ubuntu GNOME Remix' to 'Ubuntu GNOME Edition'. This would match the
other Ubuntu flavors that don't use the *buntu naming convention.

Jeremy