Ubuntu community meeting on artwork: Monday 18 October, 1400 UTC on #ubuntu

[Frank Merenda]

Bryan Pizzuti <bpizzuti <at> optonline.net> writes:

> 
> I would really love to be online to participate in this discussion, as it's
> very important to Ubuntu's development and acceptance.  Unfortunately,
> that's 10 AM here, and I have a dentist's appointment at 10:30. So instead
> of attending, I would just ask that everyone keep in mind everything that's
> been discussed here, but especially those of us who are involved in getting
> buisnesses to accept Linux, and specifically Ubuntu. Also keep in mind other
> cultures that do not find humans on the desktop acceptable, and accept that
> fact, since you'd want them to respect your culture as well. 

I am also in the US, and this is right in the middle of the morning for me as
well. I would love to participate in this discussion, but won't be able to, so I
would like to just express my thoughts quickly as well.

I've managed to get Linux into a few companies that I have worked at, including
some large ones like ADP and John Deere. My consulting firm develops on and runs
it's servers exclusively on Linux. ADP was through an acquisition (they didn't
keep Linux around after), and at John Deere we managed to get it on some servers
as well as the majority of the developer's desktops in my group. Deere is still
running Linux in those places. While I know that the goal of Ubuntu isn't to
take over corporate America, I do believe that it's not a goal to *prevent* the
acceptance into the corporate environment. If any C*O in any of these companies
I have worked at had seen any of these images (or anyone in Human Resources, for
that matter), or anyone had been offended - as many easily are here, not only
would I have lost the contract/job (no big deal, there's always more out there),
but Linux would have had been banned at that location in the future (unless
views eventually changed). It was *hard* to get Linux in those places, and
anything that provides a barrier to getting Linux accepted is viewed in those
situations as a bad thing. Also the people involved at those places may have
gotten a negative opinion about Linux, thinking it's the stereotypical young
guy-liking pr0n, just installing it because it's 'cool. What happened when I
installed Linux in those places is that everyone saw that it was a stable and
robust system that worked incredibly well. Several other people where I worked
have started using Linux as a side effect of the success we have had with Linux
in the workplace. Linux has managed to get into more and more companies over the
years, and I would hate to have any backwards movement for any reason.

I feel that Ubuntu and the people behind it have something great going here. I
would hate to see the distribution not get the exposure it deserves because the
(default) artwork offends some of the uptight folks here in the US. The above
post by Bryan hits the point right on the head. Mutual respect and attempting to
not offend any culture is going to be key in getting more people to use Ubuntu. 

All that being said, I think that the artwork/photos in question are really well
done, and I would personally consider keeping them on my laptop for use at home.
My wife also likes the photos a lot as well. I also appreciate the message they
are putting across, and feel that the photos express the message behind Ubuntu
very well. Maybe the good folks at Ubuntu can offer an easy way to
install/switch out themes, i.e. 'apt-get install ubuntu-theme-human' or
something similar?

Ok, maybe it wasn't such a *quick* expression of my thoughts. :)

Take care everyone,
-Frank