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

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Mittwoch, den 15.12.2010, 09:43 -0800 schrieb Jesse Keating:
> On 12/15/10 8:51 AM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> > And now there is
> > http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2010/12/second-class-citizens.html
> > 
> 
> Having read that blog post last night, and actually read the IRC logs, I
> think Nicu is way out of line here.
> 
> A /request/ was brought to the meeting.  Not a demand.  A request.  It
> was done respectfully, and with full awareness that the request would be
> a touchy one.  Lots of useful discussion happened.  It did not appear at
> all to be a demand, or to be "non-negotiable".

The emphasis it was brought up with made it sound like it was not only a
request.

> Not only that, the request was for the Desktop spin, and only the
> Desktop spin.  The other spins would be able to use the wallpaper they
> wanted.  

I'm afraid this will create all kinds of packaging and upgrade problems.

> This seems to fall much more in line with what you are asking,
> which is to let the sigs controlling the spins have decision power over
> what goes into them.

Fair point indeed, however this is something that I'd like to leave to
the project rather than to the SIGs.

If we want to establish Fedora as a 'brand', we need to be different
from other projects. Artwork is a point where you can easily gain a
attention and recognizability without forking code. It also gives us the
opportunity to establish a common look and feel across different
desktops which is a big win for our users.

I have do admit I was not a friend of Nodoka at first, but I began to
like it and designed the xwfm4 and openbox themes to make Xfce and LXDE
look similar to our GNOME defaults.

With the move to Clearlooks we lost the uniqueness. Before you could
distinguish a Fedora desktop from a distance of 5 meters but now we are
just one more desktop.

> So I'm really confused why you chose to bring this up.

Because it is a good example that one desktop is more equal than the
others. We also were the first distro to ship KDE 4, but nobody dared to
ask if we ship their artwork.

Regards,
Christoph

P.S.: You only responded to one out 10 examples. Does this mean my other
points are valid?