On Oct 17, 2014 7:38 PM, Debarshi Ray rishi.is@lostca.se wrote:
On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 08:29:51AM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:10:02AM +0300, Nikos Roussos wrote:
Also I don't think the "Upstream doesn't put a logo" is a good argument. We are not just distributing upstream. We are building a product (Workstation in this case) and we can decide on our own what's best.
Absolutely. We want to align technology and effort with upstream as best we can, but our goals (and therefore needs) aren't dictated by upstream, and sometimes they will diverge. A _cosmetic_ change like this isn't a big divergence in any way ??? but *is* a big deal for Fedora.
What I find troubling is that every few months there is this whole branding debate driven by a 'this is Fedora, our needs are different from upstream' ideology. Once it was the login screen, then it was the logo in 'about' or Settings -> Details, and now it is about the default shell chrome.
I find it troubling that Fedora's need to exert its brand is increasing so quickly, and the lack of acknowledgement that such needs have been granted so far
From what I can gather the issue that is being encountered here is that Fedora Workstation is being marketed as a product, yet nowhere (highly) visible on the product is the brand. As grateful as we can be for being "granted" the ability to put the fedora logo in the details screen, this is the physical product equivalent of having the logo on the front of the user manual.
The workstation product has an additional hurdle to overcome because of the nature of upstreams. Any downstream looks essentially the same as us. Without some better, more visible reinforcement of the brand there is no differentiation between Fedora workstation and any other distribution using GNOME. If we rely on the visual style of the shell alone as our branding element, then to people that know what the shell actually is you are running GNOME, not Fedora Workstation. To people that don't know what the shell is, you are running something called "activities".
All other desktop OSes that have strong brands have identifying features on their desktops to reinforce their brand: Ubuntu, Windows, OS X, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Regards, Ryanlerch
Beginning to look like a slippery slope.
Cheers, Debarshi
On Fri, 2014-10-17 at 20:54 -0400, Ryan Lerch wrote:
From what I can gather the issue that is being encountered here is that Fedora Workstation is being marketed as a product, yet nowhere (highly) visible on the product is the brand. As grateful as we can be for being "granted" the ability to put the fedora logo in the details screen, this is the physical product equivalent of having the logo on the front of the user manual.
The workstation product has an additional hurdle to overcome because of the nature of upstreams. Any downstream looks essentially the same as us. Without some better, more visible reinforcement of the brand there is no differentiation between Fedora workstation and any other distribution using GNOME. If we rely on the visual style of the shell alone as our branding element, then to people that know what the shell actually is you are running GNOME, not Fedora Workstation. To people that don't know what the shell is, you are running something called "activities".
All other desktop OSes that have strong brands have identifying features on their desktops to reinforce their brand: Ubuntu, Windows, OS X, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Regards, Ryanlerch
I wonder if a collaboration between the Fedora and GNOME designers might find room for a downstream logo somewhere, as was the case for the login screen when we tried to remove the logo there. I suspect not in this case, but it doesn't hurt to try.
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:21:27PM -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I wonder if a collaboration between the Fedora and GNOME designers might find room for a downstream logo somewhere, as was the case for the login screen when we tried to remove the logo there. I suspect not in this case, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Yes, that's absolutely what we need — thanks.
On Sat, 2014-10-18 at 11:37 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:21:27PM -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I wonder if a collaboration between the Fedora and GNOME designers might find room for a downstream logo somewhere, as was the case for the login screen when we tried to remove the logo there. I suspect not in this case, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Yes, that's absolutely what we need — thanks.
This thread seems to have reached the limits of productivity, but I do not want to leave it with a false sense that we can just ask the designers working on GNOME to specify in which prominent and always visible position to put the Fedora logo and that will solve thing... so I wanted to summarize a few things that likely have come up earlier in the thread:
It was a deliberate choice - part of the GNOME brand identity - that the top panel *does not* include a logo. Two of the key design ideas of GNOME 3 are that elements visible at all times are minimized, and that everything outside of the application - that is not the content that the user is working on, is kept monochrome and dark. Beyond violating those principles, putting a logo next to Activities - which is honestly the only place that makes any sense - has the problem that it looks a separate control, confusing the user and making access to the Activities overview a precision pointing activity instead of the intended ultra-easy corner-of-the-screen access.
We can obviously ignore all of this and put a logo onto the top bar anyways case, but it's an unfriendly action towards GNOME on the part of Fedora. And is especially problematical because Fedora *is* seen as very closely associated with GNOME, and at that point it becomes nearly impossible to convince any other distro not to put their logos there as well.
- Owen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen Taylor" otaylor@redhat.com To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 10:06:56 AM Subject: Re: Workstation branding on login screen (GDM)
On Sat, 2014-10-18 at 11:37 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:21:27PM -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I wonder if a collaboration between the Fedora and GNOME designers might find room for a downstream logo somewhere, as was the case for the login screen when we tried to remove the logo there. I suspect not in this case, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Yes, that's absolutely what we need — thanks.
This thread seems to have reached the limits of productivity, but I do not want to leave it with a false sense that we can just ask the designers working on GNOME to specify in which prominent and always visible position to put the Fedora logo and that will solve thing... so I wanted to summarize a few things that likely have come up earlier in the thread:
It was a deliberate choice - part of the GNOME brand identity - that the top panel *does not* include a logo. Two of the key design ideas of GNOME 3 are that elements visible at all times are minimized, and that everything outside of the application - that is not the content that the user is working on, is kept monochrome and dark. Beyond violating those principles, putting a logo next to Activities - which is honestly the only place that makes any sense - has the problem that it looks a separate control, confusing the user and making access to the Activities overview a precision pointing activity instead of the intended ultra-easy corner-of-the-screen access.
We can obviously ignore all of this and put a logo onto the top bar anyways case, but it's an unfriendly action towards GNOME on the part of Fedora. And is especially problematical because Fedora *is* seen as very closely associated with GNOME, and at that point it becomes nearly impossible to convince any other distro not to put their logos there as well.
I think calling it an unfriendly action towards GNOME is overstating it. Fedora is a separate thing and is not beholden to any of its upstream communities, including GNOME. We try to align as much as possible with our upstreams because it makes sense, not because having our own ideas is by definition hostile towards someone else. To me this is almost the same argument that people make about shipping various desktops, that somehow not shipping desktop XYZ is somehow 'hostile' towards said desktop. It is not, regardless of discussing branding of the desktop we ship or which desktop to ship, our choice is about what is right for us given our requirements and resources, not about trying to 'hurt' someone else.
So my suggestion at this point is that we give Mo and Ryan a chance to finish their writeup and proposal, and also help us establish a resolution path for these kind of branding and design related issues. We could of course just make it part of the workstation working group meeting, but I feel that this is a good chance to take advantage that we have a lot of design specialists in our community and use their expertise to make the right decisions here.
Christian
On Mon, 2014-10-20 at 10:37 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
From: "Owen Taylor" otaylor@redhat.com We can obviously ignore all of this and put a logo onto the top bar anyways case, but it's an unfriendly action towards GNOME on the part of Fedora. And is especially problematical because Fedora *is* seen as very closely associated with GNOME, and at that point it becomes nearly impossible to convince any other distro not to put their logos there as well.
I think calling it an unfriendly action towards GNOME is overstating it. Fedora is a separate thing and is not beholden to any of its upstream communities, including GNOME. We try to align as much as possible with our upstreams because it makes sense, not because having our own ideas is by definition hostile towards someone else. To me this is almost the same argument that people make about shipping various desktops, that somehow not shipping desktop XYZ is somehow 'hostile' towards said desktop. It is not, regardless of discussing branding of the desktop we ship or which desktop to ship, our choice is about what is right for us given our requirements and resources, not about trying to 'hurt' someone else.
If we took, say, Inkscape, and patched it to put a Fedora logo in the middle of the toolbox, it would clearly be seen as poorly representing Inkscape. If Fedora was the most common way that people obtained and tried out Inkscape, I'd expect that people working on Inkscape might be upset - even if the goal of putting the logo there wasn't to provoke the Inkscape developers. (I said "unfriendly" not "hostile")
There are certainly ways that Fedora branding can be increased in the desktop which do make sense within the overall desktop design. I'm interested to see what Mo and Ryan come up with and I'm sure they'll do a good job. But I think it's important to realize that if we put constraints onto the end goal - in particular if we require branding that is continually visible - then there is an inherent conflict.
- Owen
On 20 October 2014 16:16, Owen Taylor otaylor@redhat.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-10-20 at 10:37 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
From: "Owen Taylor" otaylor@redhat.com We can obviously ignore all of this and put a logo onto the top bar anyways case, but it's an unfriendly action towards GNOME on the part
of
Fedora. And is especially problematical because Fedora *is* seen as
very
closely associated with GNOME, and at that point it becomes nearly impossible to convince any other distro not to put their logos there as well.
I think calling it an unfriendly action towards GNOME is overstating it. Fedora is a separate thing and is not beholden to any of its upstream communities, including GNOME. We try to align as much as possible with
our
upstreams because it makes sense, not because having our own ideas is by definition hostile towards someone else. To me this is almost the same argument that people make about shipping various desktops, that somehow not shipping desktop XYZ is somehow 'hostile' towards said desktop. It is not, regardless of discussing branding of the desktop we ship or which desktop to ship, our choice is about what is right for us given our requirements and resources, not about trying to 'hurt' someone else.
If we took, say, Inkscape, and patched it to put a Fedora logo in the middle of the toolbox, it would clearly be seen as poorly representing Inkscape. If Fedora was the most common way that people obtained and tried out Inkscape, I'd expect that people working on Inkscape might be upset - even if the goal of putting the logo there wasn't to provoke the Inkscape developers. (I said "unfriendly" not "hostile")
There are certainly ways that Fedora branding can be increased in the desktop which do make sense within the overall desktop design. I'm interested to see what Mo and Ryan come up with and I'm sure they'll do a good job. But I think it's important to realize that if we put constraints onto the end goal - in particular if we require branding that is continually visible - then there is an inherent conflict.
Speaking as a lowly user my primary reason for using Fedora is that it packages a great GNOME Shell experience that's as close as possible to the design goals of the GNOME team. I think that alone is a good (almost unique) selling-point for Fedora, without Fedora having to add value on top of what GNOME provides. Put another way, I use Fedora to escape distro-specific meddling with the desktop environment.
It seems to me that the GNOME team has put a lot of thought into creating a distraction-free environment to work in, so I agree that compromising those efforts in order to provide persistent branding could be interpreted as 'unfriendly'. Then again, any GNOME folks reaching that conclusion need only review this thread to understand that's not Fedora's intent, and that here we're trying to fulfil a legitimate goal without running rough-shod over upstream's work.
Having said all that, I don't really think that replacing the word "Activities" with a Fedora logo would bad be at all. "Activities" isn't a great term to describe what happens when one clicks there; it's almost impossible to find a single word to describe all that functionality. I suspect that the Window's Start Button is precedent enough for putting the Activities functionality behind a logo instead of a place-holder word, and there's plenty of precedent with other Linux desktop environments, including GNOME 2.
Realistically it seems that the login screen, wallpaper and Activities corner are the only practical options. There's plenty of room on the login screen for a logo, and to my mind adding one wouldn't detrimentally affect the user-experience. I haven't taken the time to understand the legal implications of having a logo on the wallpaper, but it does seem like a logical thing to do and surely legal restrictions can be dealt with...? If the Activities corner logo was implemented as a Shell extension then objectors could remove it and Shell need not be patched to provide the logo.
To be honest I don't really understand what all the fuss is about.
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Christian Schaller -
Matthew Miller -
Michael Catanzaro -
Owen Taylor -
Richard Turner -
Ryan Lerch