Community response of new ubuntu artwork

[Ubuntu Forums Post]

The attitudes exposed by this innocuous Human Art issue are interesting, to say the least.

If the objective of the UbuntuLinux project is to maximize profit and appeal to the lowest common denominator, perhaps keeping it bland and cutting out all the "humanistic nonsense" is the way to go.

But if Ubuntu is about making a statement while helping grow a community around ideals such as humanity and tolerance, it might have to face up to the opposition by certain types with more restrictive moral attitudes.

Perhaps one way to bandage the tolerance gash that clearly exists, let's say, between the conservative american and liberal european schools of thought, would be to make the presented artwork dependent on one's geographical location. Maybe "work" installations could also be separated from "home" installations; I mean, shouldn't the app selection also differ tiny little bit there?

Not so long ago one expatriate (mainland) Chinese open-source developer dumped a project he had been participating in, simply because other folks felt like allowing the Taiwanese users to *optionally* pick their national flag to denote their island instead of the imposing the People's Republic of China's flag upon them. Should the project have imposed this man's political views upon the people living in Taiwan, instead of making the choosing of one's preferred symbols simply optional? What if a hundred million "conservative" mainland Chinese had descended upon this project to demand that their political(-ly correct?) views must prevail, or else...?

If the image of a few human beings holding hands in celebration of human fraternity is really capable of actually offending some people's moral view of the world, and if Ubuntu team wishes to appeal to the largest possible variety of people, surely the humanistic artwork and other items "offensive" to people with very strong views could be made optional.

Then again I'm sure that religious, political or nationalistic groups are fully capable of catering to their own followers exactly what they have grown to expect, but hey, there isn't necessarily much "ubuntu" left to celebrate... although then again all those groups can simply take the produce of the Ubuntu community (which is already a shared creation with/through innumerable other open-source projects) and slap their own symbols on it.