FESCo meeting summary for 2009-06-26

[Ricky Zhou]

On 2009-06-29 01:13:07 AM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> The thing is, that's exactly the type of design GNOME is using and KDE is
> rejecting, so you will never get KDE people to approve of this. And thus
> following that policy makes our download page look biased and uninviting to
> KDE users.
Sorry, but even if presenting one default, unconfusing choice to new
users that have absolutely no idea what they want is considered biased
against what KDE users approve of, then there is no way to make you
happy while sticking to the goal of that page.  We make sure clueless
users can get the default choice first - people that know what they want
can live with an extra click.  If KDE were the default choice for these
new clueless users, it would certainly also be the single default choice
on the front get-fedora page.

> That assumes they actually know what they get when they click on the
> mysterious sidebar link. People can be experienced GNU/Linux users without
> knowing the sitemap of the Fedora web site by heart.
I'm sorry?  "KDE fans go here!" is mysterious?  We're happy to take
suggestions for better text there.

> And as irrelevant as it may be in practice for experienced users, people do
> look at how the default download page looks like to judge how much a
> distribution supports the various desktop environments. It may sound silly
> to you, it might even actually BE silly, but it's something people do, so
> it has to be taken into account in your design. Trading our reputation in
> the KDE community (i.e. about half of the GNU/Linux user base!) for the
> convenience of completely clueless potential users who don't even know what
> GNOME and KDE are and can't even be bothered to look them up with a search
> engine (who are unlikely to become permanent Fedora users and even more
> unlikely to become contributors) is a really bad tradeoff!
Somebody could just as well say, "Trading the convenience of completely
clueless potential users for experienced users who can't even be
bothered to look up how much a distribution supports the various desktop
environments (or just click the giant KDE button on the sidebar) is a
really bad tradeoff!"  You're welcome to bring up the target user for
our get-fedora page on fedora-websites-list if you disagree, but the
vast majority of us want to put clueless users first and have
experienced users that know exactly what they want make one extra click.

> > If other DEs were to be moved off of spins.fp.o in the future,
> 
> Count on me to fight tooth and nails against declassing KDE in that way!
> Turning the KDE spin torrent-only (as the spins.fp.o spins are now) would
> be a real catastrophe. 
Just to be clear, I said nothing about KDE being moved to spins.fp.o, I
said if other DEs were to be moved _off_ of spins.fp.o, it would get an
entry on get-fedora-all and maybe a dedicated page like KDE, but it
would not be yet another option on the front get-fedora page.

Thanks,
Ricky
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