Outcome of community meeting on 18 October

[Somnonaut]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 12:05:07 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at hbd.com> wrote:
> 
> We had an extensive open discussion on Monday about the artwork for the
> final release of 4.10 (The Warty Warthog). I think it's fair to say we
> had representatives from across the community present and participating,
> as well as many of the core developers. A full transcript of the meeting
> is at http://people.ubuntu.com/~thom/ubuntu-artwork-meeting.log
> 
> Based on the meeting I've asked for the following to be done in time for
> the final release of Warty:
> 
>  - the default login screen will contain no imagery
>  - the "circle of friends" login screen will be available as an option
> after installation on new machines
> 
>  - the  gnomesplash will revert to that of the preview release, with the
> Ubuntu logo
> 
>  - the default desktop will remain the "ubuntu" desktop which has the
> chocolate colour and ubuntu logo
>  - the calendar will not be installed by default, this is now a separate
> ubuntu-calendar package
>    - the calendar requires network access for monthly updated wallpapers
> in any event
> 
> All of these changes have now been made and should be available to you
> when you next update the packages on an installed Ubuntu system.
> 
> The art theme of ubuntu is one way in which we would like to distinguish
> the distribution, but it's clear that will need to be a derivative work
> or separate layer of packages rather than part of the default.
> 
> In the pantheon of ideas about which it could be asked "which dumbnut
> dreamed this up?" the idea of strong human imagery in Ubuntu would
> appear to feature prominently, and the dumbnut in question would be me.
> I'll have to shoulder any blame for the original idea and it's
> execution, so please direct any such feedback at me rather than other
> Ubuntu developers, and thanks to all of you who helped to straighten me out.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark

Excellent decisions all around. As a vociferous opponent of the
"questionable" artwork being used in the final release, let me just
add that, personally, I thought the design was excellent and I would
have no issues using it on my personal system.  That said, you've
definitely made the right decision in making Ubuntu visually
acceptable for a diverse user base.

I will now be happily distributing copies of the final release to any
and all takers at our 15,000-student university.

Cheers.