GNOME as the default desktop (was Re: Fedora Board Meeting Minutes - 2010-12-06)

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> And in fact its moving both ways. In MeeGo they are licensing their
> look and feel as proprietary and we explicitly can't use it.

It's just another symptom of a deeper and more widespread meme for
upstream projects to take ownership of the delivered experience. Meego
is drawing a land in the sand..a very deep line filled with sharp
nasty pointed things...and saying quite boldly that their deliverables
are their deliverables.  it will be very sad if that approach is the
only approach that ends up being workable as it pretty much cuts out
3rd party distributors entirely.

Consider the _request_ GNOME is making as an early olive branch to
find a way to partner with distributors while still meeting the goals
of taking having the upstream project taking ownership of the user
experience.  We can't just bury our heads in the sand and just keep
doing what we have been doing...because the landscape is changing. We
have to figure out how to work with upstream projects when they want
to take more control (and accountability) over the final delivered
experience.

-jef