Response to "Getting Fedora Out of the If-Then Loop"

Paul W. Frields stickster at gmail.com
Fri Feb 19 23:53:38 UTC 2010


On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 06:38:07PM -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-02-20 at 00:08 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> > So why did nobody from the design team speak up when I filed the ticket?
> > If you expect the ambassadors to communicate their request in a timely
> > manner, then you should do the same.
> 
> It doesn't work like that. *You* were the one asking for something, not
> us.
> 
> > > and generally stray away from the standard 
> > > template we have been using for three releases now. 
> > 
> > I am not a designer, I have no idea what templates or programs you use
> > and nobody bothered to tell me.
> 
> You certainly didn't bother to ask or RTFM on the wiki.
> 
> > > Oh, and you didn't mention that you
> > > wanted those changes to the standard format until we had already invested time and
> > > effort into producing what you actually did ask for.
> > 
> > Sorry, with due respect: Nobody had done anything, so who invested time?
> 
> Tatica did as you already made reference to!
> 
> > > Not only that! The sources to all the media labels we originally produced were available,
> > > from November on, so there was no reason to wait until the night before you needed the labels to
> > > start trying to work them out on your own!
> > 
> > This just isn't true. as you correctly say the request was opened on
> > 2009-12-19. The event we needed the media for was FOSDEM which started
> > in 2010-02-06.
> 
> You completely missed the point that media artwork was scheduled to
> happen in November. I don't care when your event was. We have a set
> point in the schedule where we produce all of the media artwork so it is
> all consistent and ready well before release date. You missed that date
> by a month. 
> 
> > > In conclusion, your posting that you site is in NO WAY evidence of a 'little or no support' for
> > > spins. It's more evidence that:
> > > 
> > > 1) the design team needs help and needs to be treated more like human beings rather than robots. 
> > > the time around a release is the most stressful and demanding time for us.
> > > 
> > > 2) you need to be more explicit in what you are looking for when you make a request rather than
> > > waste a designer's time putting something together for you, only for you to reject it because she 
> > > couldn't read your mind and you never clearly explained what you were asking for
> > 
> > Tatica and me were in contact most of the time over IRC. She knew what I
> > was after and she did a very good job. I only did some small corrections
> > as outlined in the ticket.
> > 
> > The reason to start all over again was that you told me that the SVGs
> > created with inkscape wont work because they lack CMYK and we needed to
> > start all over again with scribus. So if someone wasted Taticas time I
> > don't think it was me.
> 
> They don't. Had you brought them to the printers (if they would have
> accepted them) they would have come out purple instead of blue. I'm very
> sorry it wasn't realized in a timely fashion, but that's orthogonal to
> the fact that your initial request was *NOT* upfront wrt what you
> needed.
> 
> > I'm not sure if this waste could be avoided, but as the ticket was
> > assigned to you all the time and copies of all mails go over the
> > design-team-tickets mailing list, I think you and others should have
> > been aware of it.
> 
> There is nobody actively monitoring the design-team-tickets mailing list
> as far as I'm aware. What do you want me to do, reply to every ticket,
> 'too busy, sorry?' If you don't get an answer, there's nobody to do it.
> You have to find someone to do it. We have a mailing list advertised on
> the front page of the ticket system as the place to ask.
> 
> > > 4) realize any request you make of the design team that falls within calendar vicinity of a Fedora 
> > > release is not going to be high-priority because the team's highest-priority deliverables are
> > > the release artwork. The plan outlining the release artwork happens months in advance and is aligned
> > > to an extremely tight schedule. Since these labels were clearly not on that plan, they were treated 
> > > accordingly.
> > 
> > First you say I was a month late, then you say I should not open a
> > ticket close to release. If I opened the ticked at the beginning of
> > November when the decision was taken, it would have been just before
> > F12. Instead it was opened 2009-12-19 which means F12 was out the door
> > for a month and there was no trace of an upcoming release.
> 
> The schedule is determined, as I already told you, months in advance of
> release. If you had filed the ticket in December and expected those
> spins' media labels to be added to the F13 rotation, that would have
> been far more reasonable. Having a schedule is the only way we've been
> able to make sure stuff gets done, and even then things happen and we
> have to leave tasks uncompleted.
> > 
> > > One team you really need to refrain from picking on as an example of some
> > > conspiratorial anti-spins agenda is the design team. We have never, ever turned down a 
> > > request on the basis of who made it or for what team within the project it was for, and
> > > the spins.fpo site, especially the games spin site which was a huge effort
> > > almost everyone on the team contributed to (we did over 100 designs, one for each of 
> > > the individual games in the spin), was a huge project we took on over top of
> > > the usual release artwork deliverables we are responsible for. That was to
> > > directly benefit the spins!
> > 
> > I never said you turned down a turned down a request on the basis of who
> > made it, but it is evident that the design team has other priorities
> > than the spins. 
> 
> The design team has one priority that trumps every other, including the
> spins -  the release artwork. I just told you this, and it should be
> blaringly obvious anyway. This is NOT a conspiracy against spins. If we
> don't have artwork to ship, NONE of the spins have artwork so all
> variants of Fedora are negatively impacted. It would be foolish to
> produce media artwork for only one or two spins at the detriment of the
> theme artwork for all.
> 
> > How much time have you spent on gnome-shell recently? A few days? A
> > week? But on the other hand there is nobody who has 2 or 3 hours to do
> > the spins media?
> 
> How dare you call into question what I work on. You have no right to
> dictate what I work on or question what I do with my time.
> 
> We have almost 200 open requests on our plate of which only the easiest
> might take 2-3 hours to work on. Get in line. Also, just because
> something doesn't take a long time to do doesn't mean it should be done
> first. If we only took on the projects that took the least amount of
> time, large more-involved projects like the fpo revamp would NEVER
> happen. 

This subthread has gotten out of hand.  Please everyone, cool off and
stop adding fuel to a needless fire.  No more replies here please.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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