[ubuntu-uk] Community distro ?

[Michael Wood]

Thanks for your response Mark, very insightful, much appreciated.


Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>    Michael Wood wrote:
>
> Two things have really touched a nerve with me recently and I would like 
> to open a discussion.
>
> Firstly: 
> [1]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork#head-8c391b3699f3571c2aedfa7cb78adb4623206933
>
> "Feisty artwork will be designed by kwwii -- of Kubuntu Edgy and KDE
> Oxygen Icon fame. He will be working closely with sabdfl in the design.
> Do not expect community involvement in defining this portion."
>
> This seems to contradict entirely the description of ubuntu "Ubuntu is a
> community developed, linux-based operating system ...." - Ubuntu.com .
>
>
>    We've struggled to get a cohesive community-directed art strategy.
>    Despite bringing community art contributors to our developer summits,
>    funding part-time work by community artists, and having a completely
>    open process of contribution, we have not been able to produce a
>    unified theme through a community lead process.
>    We found that our approach was resulting in an environment where new
>    artists would show up and expect to be able to lead, from scratch, a
>    completely new theme that was to their taste. There was no clear
>    community lead, but instead multiple fragmented efforts.
>    Based on a deep review of our approach, we came to the conclusion that
>    it's extremely difficult to get a "core theme" that is produced by
>    multiple volunteer contributors where there is no definitive lead. By
>    core theme I mean wallpaper, login, splash and boot splash.
>    So, for Feisty, we are saying that there are two ways the community
>    can contribute:
>     1. Develop complete themes, which we can evaluate, and if a theme
>    emerges which is clean, consistent, complete, and of high quality then
>    it can be included directly in Ubuntu, but not as the default. Such a
>    theme could become the default in a future release if it wins
>    widespread praise in the community. So far, I have not seen a theme
>    emerge which meets these criteria.
>     2. Contribute to the fleshing out of a theme produced by a single,
>    mandated designer. That designer, in this cycle, is Kwii. Folks who
>    want to flesh out the default theme need to follow Kwii's lead.
>
> So far the Art work for Feisty has been rather doggy in my opinoin and I
> don't hold a huge amount of hope for it getting better. Not saying that
> Kwwii isn't a good artist but I don't see his art suiting the GNOME
> Desktop. It may turn out to be excellent but the discussion, ideas and
> contribution which is provided by having community involvement is going
> to be completely lost.
>
>
>    We looked everywhere for artists, and in the end hired Kwii because we
>    thought he was the best available.
>
> Secondly, why, with all the information i've been able to squeeze, won't
> ubuntu/canonical consider sponsoring GUADEC (GNOME User And Developer
> European Conference) but  were willing to be Gold Sponsor of the last
> aKadamy  ? (KDE's Conference) especially considering that GNOME is the
> desktop that Ubuntu and Edubuntu uses.
>
>
>    Consider the total contribution and support we provide, in terms of
>    full time salaries, bugs, patches, conference sponsorships, we felt
>    that we already make a substantial contribution to GNOME and wanted to
>    balance that with a sponsorship of KDE.
>
> These two issues I have seem to be linked by  my feeling that ubuntu is
> an organisation who's community only has a pseudo influence over
> decisions that really matter. It would be in the ubuntu communities
> interest to be a sponsor of GUADEC and to have community involved art
> work.
>
>
>    In Ubuntu, actions matter. If you really want to make an art
>    contribution, it will be welcomed BUT it will need to be of world
>    class standard and will need to fit in with the work being done across
>    the whole project. I'm not sympathetic to someone upset that their
>    single contribution does not make it in when that contribution is not
>    aligned with the work that is already being done. We can't achieve
>    success if we splinter and try to take a million different artistic
>    lines. That's a tough position, but I think it's a necessary one.
>
>    Mark
>
>   


-- 
/\/\ichael [ email at michaelwood.me.uk  ]
  \/\/ood  [ http://michaelwood.me.uk ]