Thanks for your response Mark, very insightful, much appreciated.
Mark Shuttleworth wrote: > Michael Wood wrote: > > Two things have really touched a nerve with me recently and I would like > to open a discussion. > > Firstly: > [1]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork#head-8c391b3699f3571c2aedfa7cb78adb4623206933 > > "Feisty artwork will be designed by kwwii -- of Kubuntu Edgy and KDE > Oxygen Icon fame. He will be working closely with sabdfl in the design. > Do not expect community involvement in defining this portion." > > This seems to contradict entirely the description of ubuntu "Ubuntu is a > community developed, linux-based operating system ...." - Ubuntu.com . > > > We've struggled to get a cohesive community-directed art strategy. > Despite bringing community art contributors to our developer summits, > funding part-time work by community artists, and having a completely > open process of contribution, we have not been able to produce a > unified theme through a community lead process. > We found that our approach was resulting in an environment where new > artists would show up and expect to be able to lead, from scratch, a > completely new theme that was to their taste. There was no clear > community lead, but instead multiple fragmented efforts. > Based on a deep review of our approach, we came to the conclusion that > it's extremely difficult to get a "core theme" that is produced by > multiple volunteer contributors where there is no definitive lead. By > core theme I mean wallpaper, login, splash and boot splash. > So, for Feisty, we are saying that there are two ways the community > can contribute: > 1. Develop complete themes, which we can evaluate, and if a theme > emerges which is clean, consistent, complete, and of high quality then > it can be included directly in Ubuntu, but not as the default. Such a > theme could become the default in a future release if it wins > widespread praise in the community. So far, I have not seen a theme > emerge which meets these criteria. > 2. Contribute to the fleshing out of a theme produced by a single, > mandated designer. That designer, in this cycle, is Kwii. Folks who > want to flesh out the default theme need to follow Kwii's lead. > > So far the Art work for Feisty has been rather doggy in my opinoin and I > don't hold a huge amount of hope for it getting better. Not saying that > Kwwii isn't a good artist but I don't see his art suiting the GNOME > Desktop. It may turn out to be excellent but the discussion, ideas and > contribution which is provided by having community involvement is going > to be completely lost. > > > We looked everywhere for artists, and in the end hired Kwii because we > thought he was the best available. > > Secondly, why, with all the information i've been able to squeeze, won't > ubuntu/canonical consider sponsoring GUADEC (GNOME User And Developer > European Conference) but were willing to be Gold Sponsor of the last > aKadamy ? (KDE's Conference) especially considering that GNOME is the > desktop that Ubuntu and Edubuntu uses. > > > Consider the total contribution and support we provide, in terms of > full time salaries, bugs, patches, conference sponsorships, we felt > that we already make a substantial contribution to GNOME and wanted to > balance that with a sponsorship of KDE. > > These two issues I have seem to be linked by my feeling that ubuntu is > an organisation who's community only has a pseudo influence over > decisions that really matter. It would be in the ubuntu communities > interest to be a sponsor of GUADEC and to have community involved art > work. > > > In Ubuntu, actions matter. If you really want to make an art > contribution, it will be welcomed BUT it will need to be of world > class standard and will need to fit in with the work being done across > the whole project. I'm not sympathetic to someone upset that their > single contribution does not make it in when that contribution is not > aligned with the work that is already being done. We can't achieve > success if we splinter and try to take a million different artistic > lines. That's a tough position, but I think it's a necessary one. > > Mark > > -- /\/\ichael [ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] \/\/ood [ http://michaelwood.me.uk ] -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
