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

[Jaroslav Reznik]

On Wednesday, December 15, 2010 06:43:43 pm Jesse Keating wrote:
> 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".
> 
> 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.  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.

It's more question of identity - we were thinking about shipping upstream 
artwork, as upstream asked us to do it. Same reason why Gnome upstream and spin 
ask now. But we decided to go with Fedora artwork by Fedora Design team - even 
there were some issues - miscommunication but it's now perfectly working team - 
thanks Mo and all people there - as we don't want to loose our identity - we are 
preparing final product based on what upstream provides us! 

I'm actually in favour of spin SIGs to have more power but there should be 
always something above, that holds Fedora together - to brand it as Fedora - we 
were talking a few days ago - testing, releng etc. - something that proves we 
are Fedora, we are that brand.

If we don't want Fedora identity - ok, it's not a problem - we can do a favour 
to upstreams - both Gnome and KDE would be really very happy (and actually I 
understand why - we are visible to final "customers", they are not). 

One possibility is (and not loosing Fedora identity) - do Gnome spin remix, 
market it as upstream demo version, Gnome branded, downloadable from upstream. 
It has even one more advantage - Fedora as a base distribution spread to much 
more people, maybe they realize they like it and download official Fedora then! 
Otherwise - Gnome Shell is already available in many distribution repositories 
(-Ubuntu) - it's easier to try it there. It's easy to remix, with big gain.

Or we can go much more further. In Fedora - focus on base operating system - and 
then ship branded independend products on top of it - as Gnome OS by Fedora 
Project, using Fedora Platform. Desktop team would celebrate it :) Not talking 
about forking - infrastructure should stay the same, sharing resources as today 
- just more based on consensus.

R.

PS: if Gnome team decides to go with upstream branding - it would be sad for me 
as guy who feels Fedora in his knees and would fight for Fedora - but yes, it's 
completely in their competence! I hope Design team will provide suitable wps for 
Gnome 2 and other spins - it would be bad to switch to upstream artwork for just 
one release - we would have to stay with it then...


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

-- 
Jaroslav Řezník <jreznik at redhat.com>
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

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