Default Theme v. Community

[Jonathan Byrne]

On Thursday 14 October 2004 02:07 pm, Jason Bradley Nance wrote:

> bandwagon rant. Sure, I didn't pay any money to download this
> software.  However, I have spent much of my time testing, reporting

Yeah, what he said.  Although I haven't spent much time helping anyone 
with Ubuntu (not much time right now) other than one or two on-list 
answers, over the past 6 years I have given a lot of people a lot of 
help with Linux.  In some cases, that help was to basically tell them 
to suck it up, and was not necessarily understood to be help at the 
time :-)

The thing is, the fact that we didn't buy Ubuntu (and who knows?  Maybe 
some of the people who have objected did make a contribution) or don't 
have much sweat equity in it doesn't mean we don't have a right to 
publicly voice an opinion.  There is still a sort of user-vendor 
relationship here, and users may suggest or request (but not demand, 
IMO, even if they did make a contribution) changes if they find 
something to be problematic.

What makes this user-vendor relationship?  The goals, which are very 
similar to what you find in a proprietary environment, except the 
direct profit motive is removed.  Canonical wants people to find Ubuntu  
useful and use it, both for altruistic reasons and (I would suppose) in 
the hope of making some consulting money, since they have to eat too 
and there's certainly nothing wrong with making money.  People, on the 
other hand, obviously like Ubuntu (it's popularity is skyrocketing, and 
I, a long-time Debian user, think it's a great distro) and want to use 
it in as many places as they can.

For some people, whether they like the new artwork or not, it can be 
problematic to use, either because of the culture in which they live, 
or because of workplace regulations or actual laws.  I could use it in 
my office (and I'm in the U.S.), but in some companies, it would be 
regarded as completely impermissible.  Ditto that in some whole 
countries/cultures.

In light off that, some people have said that it seems more in the 
Ubuntu spirit to provide something  neutral as the standard artwork, so 
that Ubuntu is accessible to the most people.

I'd never seen it until today when I saw it on the website, since:

A) I usually never log out
B) I removed Gnome and replaced it with KDE immediately after install
C) I use a theme I made myself, featuring a glamor shot of my wife on 
the  splash screen and pics of my kids in the wallpaper, so I only knew 
about the change from the discussion on the list :-)

I don't mind the new artwork, although neither is it exactly my cup of 
tea.  However, I can't really find fault with people asking that, for 
the sake of making Ubuntu usable by the greatest amount of people in 
the greatest number of countries/cultures/companies, that the artwork 
be something neutral.  One may agree or disagree with their opinion, 
but I can't fault them for expressing it.

Best,

Jonathan
-- 
Jonathan Byrne <jbyrne at frontbridge.com>
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FrontBridge Technologies, Inc. <http://www.frontbridge.com>

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