Community response of new ubuntu artwork

[John Harvey]

Look i understand some of what you are saying and agree with it, but
there are other less controversial ways to make this statement

Simply put if this image theme remains the default in the final release
i will have to cancel the 20Cd's i was going to distribute and change
the linux pilot at work to Red Hat or Fedora (and i really do not want
to do that but my employer will not accept the splash screen and desktop
and i can trust they wont be back without some sort of guarantee from
the devs). I will continue to use ubuntu myself no matter what but the
support from many enthusiastic people wanting to build the userbase for
ubuntu in business will be lost for no reason at all.

Im sorry but even understanding the arguments for the imagery and
sympathising some what i still cannot see what people hope to gain from
alienating large amounts of the potential user base.  Do people truly
think that good intentions can get around the cultural and religious
taboos against such imagery in non european and US countries.  if ubuntu
is linux for humanity we need to be mindfull of the sensitivities of
different cultures and not just being cool and liberal to suit our own
beliefs.

On Sun, 2004-10-17 at 13:05 -0700, Ubuntu Forums Post wrote:
> 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.
> 
-- 
John Harvey
http://www.monkeyc.net
email : linux at monkeyc.net

Using ubuntu linux - http://www.ubuntulinux.org