[Design-team] [OT] GIMP becoming too profi and thus will be excluded from Ubuntu distro

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi Nicu!

On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 19:26 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> Is perfectly fine and even desirable to have a vision, but when that 
> vision is going to be pushed as *the default*, I expect it to be 
> constructed more openly, taking into account the received input and be 
> shared by a large part of the community.

Sure, and that viewpoint is completely understandable. I think the
problem though is the communication hasn't been at the level it should
have been, so my guess is that a lot of feedback the Desktop SIG has
received hasn't been as constructive as they would like. And how could
it be, if it was given without a good idea of what the vision and goals
were in the first place? So folks were giving feedback that didn't make
sense in the context of the vision.

Now to be fair on the other side, where would you go to learn the
vision? ... Right. There isn't anywhere you can go. So people are
providing feedback, but they haven't been enabled to provide
constructive feedback.

E.g., to analogize (which you know I love to do :) ) - imagine I'm
setting out to open up a cute little neighborhood bakery that sells
pies, cakes, and cookies. I told my friends I am opening up a shop that
deals with food, but I wasn't specific in telling them my vision for it
was to be a cute little bakery. So they give me feedback, but they are
telling me things like I need to open up a bar with mixed drinks, and I
need to serve pizza and Indian curries as well, and I need to have cloth
napkins and a belly dancer and play country music. It doesn't make sense
for me to then open up a cute little bake shop with a bar and a belly
dancer - but if it turns out a bar with a belly dancer is a good idea
and there's a market demand for it, maybe I could open up a different
shop to attract those customers.

--

You're definitely pointing out problems though I think we all agree area
problems. Some of us in Fedora have been trying to backtrack a little
bit / extrapolate how we do this - the right way - with the Board's
target user identification and user research [1] initiative, which we
are and will be continuing to discuss openly and drive community input
into - exactly the way you said these things should be done. 

Actually, we're running stakeholder interviews [2] right now to help
inform our target audience and how we tackle issues like these - and we
don't have anyone identified from the Ambassadors group to interview
yet. Would you be willing to be interviewed to give an Ambassadors'
point of view to the discussion?

~m

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_Research_Plan
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_Research_Plan#Stakeholders