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

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Christoph Wickert
<christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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.

And here is the crux of the issue. Look at it from an upstream
project's perspective and their need to create a brand identity.  What
if GNOME as a project _wants_ their desktop to look the same no matter
who distributes it and want it to look different from other peer
offerings?

Right now the branding needs of a distribution project and the
branding needs of an upstream project are in conflict in our
traditional approach. Your solution prioritizes the branding needs of
the distribution and weakens the brand of the upstream project. Can we
find a better solution than this?

-jef