Voting considered harmful (Was: Echo Icon Theme in F10?)
 

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 17:03 +0000, Martin Sourada wrote:
> to ask you now is the preferred way to decide upon it. Should we hold a
> irc meeting, do a mail vote, set up a vote in the fedora voting system,
> other way?

I know I'm ranting in the wrong forum (but anyone should feel free to
forward it to the Fedora board or whatever powers that be), but, FFS,
can we please get away from this voting business? It's a disease.

Consider what happened if we started voting on what patches should go in
tarballs? Or what the dialogs in your desktop looked like? Or what
options to use by default. Or what IO scheduler to use in the kernel.

IMNSHO, voting is making Fedora turn into something mediocre that I, for
one, really don't want to work on, much less rant about. Heck, I'd be
running Debian if I wanted something like this.

The fact that you are proposing a vote only shows there's a tremendous
problem in Fedora. You guys hanging out on fedora-art-list that is
interested in the visual of the desktop _really_ _really_ need to grow
up and work with upstream projects instead of sitting in your own little
Fedora cube disconnected from the rest of the world. With your stupid
voting system.

If you think what you're doing is "value add" that makes Fedora look
better than the "competition" you are wrong. If you grasped what free
software / culture is _really_ about you'd know already that it's about
working together to deliver great value that can be maintained and
improved by something larger than yourselves. It's not about competing.
Not even if the socalled "competition" that you're trying so hard to
emulate have been to space and all that. It's about working together.
And sometimes about being that beacon that leads the way for the less
enlightened; e.g. go out there, talk with people working on the same
stuff and start working together. It's definitely not about stupid
zero-sum games with misunderstood "value adds" that may have
questionable value in the first place.

The fact that the Fedora leadership allows this art charade to go on and
on and on for eons is complete and utter FAIL. And it's making
contributors (and, no, not just me) move away from Fedora only to focus
on upstream. You are killing Fedora slowly this way.

David


--
Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
Fedora-desktop-list@redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list

Voting considered harmful (Was: Echo Icon Theme in F10?)
 

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 13:36 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 17:03 +0000, Martin Sourada wrote:
> > to ask you now is the preferred way to decide upon it. Should we hold a
> > irc meeting, do a mail vote, set up a vote in the fedora voting system,
> > other way?
>
> I know I'm ranting in the wrong forum (but anyone should feel free to
> forward it to the Fedora board or whatever powers that be), but, FFS,
> can we please get away from this voting business? It's a disease.
>
> Consider what happened if we started voting on what patches should go in
> tarballs? Or what the dialogs in your desktop looked like? Or what
> options to use by default. Or what IO scheduler to use in the kernel.
>
We are deciding about default look'n'feel of the Fedora Desktop, not
about (kernel) patches. Long ago, Red Hat hired artist, Diana Fong
started Echo Icon Theme. She has left since but community take the
project under it's hood and transfered it to less Fedora specific space.
Technically the development of Echo Icon Theme is an Upstream job,
though done by fedora artists and aiming to be default on Fedora and I'd
say we are now as open with our development as gnome's default or kde's
default icon themes are.

> IMNSHO, voting is making Fedora turn into something mediocre that I, for
> one, really don't want to work on, much less rant about. Heck, I'd be
> running Debian if I wanted something like this.
>
Well, Fedora has grown quite a big Art team, dedicated to create art for
Fedora, it's a pity not everything is easily available outside of
Fedora, but we try to be as much transparent as possible and act as an
Upstream for Fedora. With many people we are bound to have different
opinions about art and thus we need to come to some sort of compromise -
and that's what the Art Team uses the voting system for.

> The fact that you are proposing a vote only shows there's a tremendous
Definitely not. Voting is the last option when there is no better way on
deciding things (like with Fedora 10 Theme where there were enough
people interested working on four different themes, but for default we
need to chose one).

> problem in Fedora. You guys hanging out on fedora-art-list that is
> interested in the visual of the desktop _really_ _really_ need to grow
> up and work with upstream projects instead of sitting in your own little
> Fedora cube disconnected from the rest of the world. With your stupid
> voting system.
>
There's nothing wrong with voting system, if used with care. Fedora Art
isn't about competition but about collaboration. We'd like Fedora to
have distinctive look from other distros and we seem to have enough
people to do so, for some people it indeed feels like competition and
motivates them to work harder - and that's a good thing - however when
you accept is as a competition, you're disappointed when you are not
the winner - and it's easier to accept "defeat" when it's decided by
community that by one (wo)man.

> If you think what you're doing is "value add" that makes Fedora look
> better than the "competition" you are wrong. If you grasped what free
No. It's not about adding value or directly competing with others. We
just want Fedora to be usable, look nice and have distinctive looks from
other distros.

> software / culture is _really_ about you'd know already that it's about
> working together to deliver great value that can be maintained and
> improved by something larger than yourselves. It's not about competing.
Agreed.

> Not even if the socalled "competition" that you're trying so hard to
> emulate have been to space and all that. It's about working together.
I think you misunderstood our intentions here. We are trying to work
together on Fedora Art, it does not always involve directly contributing
to non-fedora-related upstreams, but we have no restrictions for doing
so. Art is slightly different from software and there are bound to be
more upstreams than just one (in case of icons think e.g. about tango,
oxygen, mist, gnome-icon-theme, hicolor, echo-icon-theme, ...) and it's
not a bad thing. We are not all doing the same thing, though we are
achieving similar ideas. It's not like "hundred and one implementation
of quick sort", but rather like "hundred and one web sites of world
universities".

> And sometimes about being that beacon that leads the way for the less
> enlightened; e.g. go out there, talk with people working on the same
> stuff and start working together. It's definitely not about stupid
> zero-sum games with misunderstood "value adds" that may have
> questionable value in the first place.
>
Yeah, I've already did (in case of nodoka gtk engine) and we hope to
work together more. In case of icon themes we can at most coordinate our
efforts on making every icon on the desktop themable.


> The fact that the Fedora leadership allows this art charade to go on and
> on and on for eons is complete and utter FAIL. And it's making
> contributors (and, no, not just me) move away from Fedora only to focus
> on upstream. You are killing Fedora slowly this way.
>
Well, seeing Fedora contributors moving to upstream is IMHO pretty much
desired and as Fedora is all about upstream it does not mean killing it
at all.

Just my two cents ;-)

Martin
--
Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
Fedora-desktop-list@redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list

Voting considered harmful (Was: Echo Icon Theme in F10?)
 

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 18:04 +0000, Martin Sourada wrote:
> No. It's not about adding value or directly competing with others. We
> just want Fedora to be usable, look nice and have distinctive looks from
> other distros.

Why is looking different, at the icon level, a good thing? Does it not
just confuse the greater community?

--
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating
--
Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
Fedora-desktop-list@redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list

Voting considered harmful (Was: Echo Icon Theme in F10?)
 

2008/10/13 David Zeuthen <davidz@redhat.com>

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 17:03 +0000, Martin Sourada wrote:

> to ask you now is the preferred way to decide upon it. Should we hold a

> irc meeting, do a mail vote, set up a vote in the fedora voting system,

> other way?



I know I'm ranting in the wrong forum (but anyone should feel free to

forward it to the Fedora board or whatever powers that be), but, FFS,

can we please get away from this voting business? It's a disease.



Consider what happened if we started voting on what patches should go in

tarballs? Or what the dialogs in your desktop looked like? Or what

options to use by default. Or what IO scheduler to use in the kernel.



IMNSHO, voting is making Fedora turn into something mediocre that I, for

one, really don't want to work on, much less rant about. Heck, I'd be

running Debian if I wanted something like this.



The fact that you are proposing a vote only shows there's a tremendous

problem in Fedora. You guys hanging out on fedora-art-list that is

interested in the visual of the desktop _really_ _really_ need to grow

up and work with upstream projects instead of sitting in your own little

Fedora cube disconnected from the rest of the world. With your stupid

voting system.



If you think what you're doing is "value add" that makes Fedora look

better than the "competition" you are wrong. If you grasped what free

software / culture is _really_ about you'd know already that it's about

working together to deliver great value that can be maintained and

improved by something larger than yourselves. It's not about competing.

Not even if the socalled "competition" that you're trying so hard to

emulate have been to space and all that. It's about working together.

And sometimes about being that beacon that leads the way for the less

enlightened; e.g. go out there, talk with people working on the same

stuff and start working together. It's definitely not about stupid

zero-sum games with misunderstood "value adds" that may have

questionable value in the first place.



The fact that the Fedora leadership allows this art charade to go on and

on and on for eons is complete and utter FAIL. And it's making

contributors (and, no, not just me) move away from Fedora only to focus

on upstream. You are killing Fedora slowly this way.
I can only applaud you for saying this so clearly. I fully agree, all of Fedora ahould be about upstream participation where possible. Added value here is a decoy, it trades off artistic satisfaction for full coverage, accesability and a unified UI experience.


- David

--
Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
Fedora-desktop-list@redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list

Voting considered harmful (Was: Echo Icon Theme in F10?)
 

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 11:39 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 18:04 +0000, Martin Sourada wrote:
> > No. It's not about adding value or directly competing with others. We
> > just want Fedora to be usable, look nice and have distinctive looks from
> > other distros.
>
> Why is looking different, at the icon level, a good thing? Does it not
> just confuse the greater community?

Well, gnome and kde already look different on that level. Does that
confuse greater community? Echo is *just another* icon set that is
coincidentally developed by some members of the Art Team who'd like to
see it as a default icon theme Fedora wide (as opposed to gnome wide or
kde wide) when ready for that.

Does it bring anything to the wider upstream community? I hope that in
the long run it will ease icon themes creation process for others as
well (e.g. with helping with replacing unthemable icons by themable
ones). Also I hope it will emerge into cross desktop icon theme used by
much wider audience than just Fedora users.

Does it bring anything to Fedora user? Different, more lively, more
3D-like art. Perhaps wider coverage of Fedora specific stuff (but that
does not need to be limited to Echo). Is that a good thing? Seriously,
who is to decide that? Definitely not me. I believe Art and Desktop
Teams (and various other desktop SIGs when Echo gets selected for other
DE's than gnome) together have the right to do so.

If not, we'll continue to be just another alternative icon theme,
developed by some of the fedora artists ;-)

Martin
--
Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
Fedora-desktop-list@redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list