On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 08:19 +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> > PRIMARY TARGET
> > * Free and open source software enthusiasts, developers, and
> > remixers.
> >
> > I haven't polled the entire team about it, but I can pretty much
> > guarantee you that this description is _not_ what we see as the target
> > audience for the Fedora Desktop.
>
> Matthias,
>
> I guess the best I can do is invite you to come and discuss this issue
> with us on the marketing list. The reason, I think, we decided to go
> with this as our primary audience, is that the pace of development in
> Fedora, the amount of breakage, and our inability to ship restricted
> software by default means that in reality, we're not going to be a
> distribution for your average desktop user.
>

Yet, the very same document has the following statement, which seems to
be at odds with this assessment:

User Experience. Fedora offers a user experience that is unsurpassed.



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Mike McGrath (mmcgrath@redhat.com) said:
> Perhaps they should also register themselves via the bottom of this page:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
> Create an IRC channel at #fedora-desktop and get involved. FWIW, I've
> never heard of a Fedora Desktop team.

No offense, but...

First hit in the wiki search for Desktop.

fedora-desktop-list.

It's not exactly hard to find, unless you're attempting to be obtuse.
And if a search is too much, the wiki is fixed now. :P

(Considering the XFCE, Sugar, "netbook", and other groups aren't listed...)

Bill

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On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 11:24 +0100, Max Spevack wrote:

> Fedora is *forced* to be a lot of things to a lot of people.

Of course. That doesn't mean that individual spins cannot have a more
clearly defined target audience.

> We have a Desktop team that is trying to innovate towards its particular
> vision. I will admit that I don't know enough about what that vision is
> as I would like to, but I am definitely eager to learn.

We are working on writing up some aspects of that vision, I'm not going
to try an impromptu definition here.

> What is
> the delta between the decision making ability and leadership ability
> that the Desktop Team has *right now*, and what the Desktop Team thinks
> it should be.

I don't think there is a big delta. We have editorial control of the
desktop spin, just like the KDE sig has full editorial control of the
KDE spin. So far, we have to a large extent failed to make use of that
editorial control, since our focus has been to work upstream or on the
boundaries of the desktop.

> (3) How appropriate is it characterize opinions as belonging to the
> Desktop Team versus individuals within that team? Far better for the
> Art Team to have one set of positions and the Desktop Team to have
> another set of positions, but to know that the collective members of
> those teams all agree with the starting points. Then you can have one
> conversation, as opposed to 7 or 8 individual ones.

You mean we need to pick our sides, elect speakers and clamp down on
dissenters ? Not going to happen. The single unifying characteristic of
the Fedora community is that we are all individualists who speak for
themselves.

> (4) Does the Desktop Team feel that it has participated in the public
> processes that the Art Team has set up? Does the DT feel that is has
> been shut out from the process? Or does the DT simply not like the
> process, and therefore doesn't want to participate in it?

Not quite sure what to say here. There are several answers:

There is a very strong sentiment that voting for the default is not the
way to go.

The process defines the possible results, by narrowing the focus and
rewarding those that meet the predefined target best. Ie having such a
process ensures that we'll always have an acceptable default background.
But if a 'default background' is not the art that would make our desktop
experience more polished, then the process will not help much.

Jon invested a significant amount of work in a comparison of OS
background images, and sent the document to this list. Is that
participating in the process ? I guess not. But it was an attempt to
influence the outcome of the process for the better.

> (5) What needs to be done to finally end this cycle of conversations in
> a way that everyone can live with? We've been having the same instance
> of this talk since Fedora 6/7 timeframe, and one way or another, it has
> to end.

I don't agree with this at all. Conversation should not end. What must
end is the divisive 'us' vs. 'them' mentality. The conversion about the
goals and visions for the desktop and its art should continue. And I
will defend the freedom of anybody in my team to criticize the art, just
as everybody else is free to criticize what vt we choose to run X on.


Matthias


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On Wed, 29 Oct 2008, Bill Nottingham wrote:

> Mike McGrath (mmcgrath@redhat.com) said:
> > Perhaps they should also register themselves via the bottom of this page:
> >
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Main_Page
> >
> > Create an IRC channel at #fedora-desktop and get involved. FWIW, I've
> > never heard of a Fedora Desktop team.
>
> No offense, but...
>
> First hit in the wiki search for Desktop.
>
> fedora-desktop-list.
>
> It's not exactly hard to find, unless you're attempting to be obtuse.
> And if a search is too much, the wiki is fixed now. :P
>
> (Considering the XFCE, Sugar, "netbook", and other groups aren't listed...)
>

Got'cha, they're a spin group. I don't think we typically consider spins
subprojects so that makes more sense.

-Mike

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Matthias Clasen wrote:


Jon invested a significant amount of work in a comparison of OS
background images, and sent the document to this list. Is that
participating in the process ? I guess not. But it was an attempt to
influence the outcome of the process for the better.


Sorry, but *not*.
Jon wrote that piece half year ago (in May) and published it on his blog
which is aggregated *only* on Planet Gnome. He didn't brought it on
either fedora-desktop or fedora-art. So I qualify it as outside of the
process.
The talked here about it for the first time only a few days ago, roughly
6 months after publishing.


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Bill Nottingham wrote:


They almost certainly are. The audience for Fedora Electronics Lab
wouldn't be the same audience as for Fedora Desktop, which isn't
(necessarily) the same audience as Fedora KDE, which isn't the
same audience as 'the Fedora spin'. I'm pretty sure the audience
for the latter has never been clearly defined.


The thing is that we want to make easier for people to "get" Fedora,
with a simplified download page and such, offering as default a single
option and this option is the Desktop spin, effectively making it the
main spin.


Since every Fedora <foo> inherits from the same package set (which
includes artwork), this becomes a sticky wicket - we end up with continual

conflict one way or another whenever anyone actually attempts to make a
change that is for a particular audience. One example is artwork. Another
might be the tty that X starts on, just to pick something out of a hat.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Having the art group create different
artwork for all the different targets we may serve with our spins?
I suspect there's a resource problem there. Moreover, it's not like
we fork initscripts for different spins, or desktop packages, etc.


We get from time to time requests for such customized artwork, he most
recent which come to my mind is the Security spin. Sometime the requests
are meet with resistance by people like me who does not understand the
need of a Fedora spin with a different look and feel (or the purpose of
still calling it Fedora) and sometime they get followed with some
artwork. But usually in such cases the artwork is... how I can say in
not-offending words? ...less than perfect, since it is developed on a
shortcut, not a full process. It may have not the best usability or

violate the guidelines (logo usage).

--
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Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
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Max Spevack wrote:


(3) How appropriate is it characterize opinions as belonging to the
Desktop Team versus individuals within that team? Far better for the
Art Team to have one set of positions and the Desktop Team to have
another set of positions, but to know that the collective members of
those teams all agree with the starting points. Then you can have one
conversation, as opposed to 7 or 8 individual ones.


We at the Art Team have a documented leadership structure and while we
are not exactly one single voice, from my experience, we usually agree
on the main points.


Bus as we are literally spread all around the world (North America,
South America, Europe, India, Asia) is impossible for the team to
participate in face to face meetings in other way than using
representatives.


--
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro

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On Wed, 29 Oct 2008, Matthias Clasen wrote:

(3) How appropriate is it characterize opinions as belonging to the
Desktop Team versus individuals within that team? Far better for the
Art Team to have one set of positions and the Desktop Team to have
another set of positions, but to know that the collective members of
those teams all agree with the starting points. Then you can have
one conversation, as opposed to 7 or 8 individual ones.


You mean we need to pick our sides, elect speakers and clamp down on
dissenters ?


No, that's not what I meant. Just that it's useful for individual teams
to have a relatively agreed-upon vision of what they want when they
start talking to other teams, so that all of the individual
conversations that do happen are more or less starting from the same
place. There's nothing sinister or anti-community in that, it's just
basic common sense and teamwork, IMHO.


(5) What needs to be done to finally end this cycle of conversations
in a way that everyone can live with? We've been having the same
instance of this talk since Fedora 6/7 timeframe, and one way or
another, it has to end.


I don't agree with this at all. Conversation should not end. What must
end is the divisive 'us' vs. 'them' mentality. The conversion about
the goals and visions for the desktop and its art should continue. And
I will defend the freedom of anybody in my team to criticize the art,
just as everybody else is free to criticize what vt we choose to run X
on.


I agree with that. I'd like the conversation to move on to a new topic
after 4 releases or arguing about the background.


--Max

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On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 09:25:44PM -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 08:19 +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> > > PRIMARY TARGET
> > > * Free and open source software enthusiasts, developers, and
> > > remixers.
> > >
> > > I haven't polled the entire team about it, but I can pretty much
> > > guarantee you that this description is _not_ what we see as the target
> > > audience for the Fedora Desktop.
> >
> > Matthias,
> >
> > I guess the best I can do is invite you to come and discuss this issue
> > with us on the marketing list. The reason, I think, we decided to go
> > with this as our primary audience, is that the pace of development in
> > Fedora, the amount of breakage, and our inability to ship restricted
> > software by default means that in reality, we're not going to be a
> > distribution for your average desktop user.
> >
>
> Yet, the very same document has the following statement, which seems to
> be at odds with this assessment:
>
> User Experience. Fedora offers a user experience that is unsurpassed.

Perhaps that should be amended:

"User Experience. Fedora offers a user experience unsurpassed by other
fully free software distributions."

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On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 10:03 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
> >
> > Jon invested a significant amount of work in a comparison of OS
> > background images, and sent the document to this list. Is that
> > participating in the process ? I guess not. But it was an attempt to
> > influence the outcome of the process for the better.
>
> Sorry, but *not*.
> Jon wrote that piece half year ago (in May) and published it on his blog
> which is aggregated *only* on Planet Gnome. He didn't brought it on
> either fedora-desktop or fedora-art. So I qualify it as outside of the
> process.
> The talked here about it for the first time only a few days ago, roughly
> 6 months after publishing it.

I explicitly said it was not part of your process.
But I have pointed to it out repeatedly back in May on this very list.


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