Al right, that's it! Here it is: the purple chicken with an axe. ;-)
On a more serious note, I have always approached this project with an open source mindset. And I think it is time for people to start agregating different aspects of software 'development' into open source dev groups, one of them being visual design of interface and image/brand. Some (larger) projects already have that. The time were software was only code is gone even for a project like SpamAssassin. It is obvious that people want their applications to work good *and* look good.
If there are people willing to contribute on the code, there are certainly people wishing to contribute with other skills too. It is just a question of tradition that those and other aspects of the whole software cycle have not been integrated. The culture of those within the open source community stick to tradition and the people with the other skills mostly don't even know what open source is. In many open source projects the visual design (and also interface design) is something usually done ad-hoc by the programmers themselves and the result is most times grotesque. Many times striving to put a pretty face on your software is seen as too "commercial" of a strategy and associated with the proprietary closed source world.
Aesthetics is part of our quality of life and if one can use excellent open source software, why not have a pleasent visual experience with it? After all, all that this project is about is making other people's life better, isn't?
Christian
Sidney Markowitz wrote:
Daniel Quinlan wrote:
By the way, I should emphasize how cool this whole process has been.
I agree. Not only have we ended up with great professional looking choices, whichever one we end up voting on, but I'm blown away by the friendly and cooperative spirit shown by the final designers to each other. It does feel very much like the open source software development process.
-- sidney
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��������������������������������������������������������������������� In any case, if the intelligence of the machines is superior to ours, must it be a gloomy future for the human race? May not we assume that their moral senses be more advanced than ours?
- Alison Adam (2002), Cyborgs in the Chinese Room
in Preston & Bishop (Eds.), Views Into The Chinese Room.(p.330)
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