A sad day for Fedora, A disappointment for Open Source

[John Baer]

Uno  wrote:
>
>
> Unfortunately I don't agree with you. Diana seam to be a fine artist,
> you are right in that. The problem is, that it takes more than being a
> fine artist to make a good desktop theme. In fact being a  fine artist
> may even be a problem as most good art is about making a statement,
> while creating a desktop theme is more like making visual elevator music.
> It should be there, it should look reasonably  good  but not draw too
> much attention or create any major mood swings of the observer, it
> should help the user find  the way in the system.



I am in agreement Diana is an excellent artist, as is Mo, and others but the
breakdown here is the process. Open Source is a community, a team, a
gathering of folks with a common desire. In FC6 the deadlines came quick and
in all honesty there was really no other choice but to turn it all over to
Diana and Mola and cross our fingers. To their credit it worked out, but
that is not the Open Source process.


> The balance between
> being dull and very good is very delicate.
>

In addition to the above comment it is important to note "quality" of the
artwork does not equal acceptance. IMO acceptance comes when the message of
the image is received and it's intent is understood. I worry when to the
word "polish" becomes the yardstick of acceptance as I don't know how to
qualify it. We discussed months earlier how wonderful it would be to create
FC7 artwork using open source products to show case of how well they work.
Is the "polish" achieved from the hand of a professional artist using Adobe
or Bryce more important than this?

To our credit this go-around we started early and there was lots of dialog
and "inclusion" (an open source value). We had buy-in from the team but it's
doesn't look like we had buy-in from fedora. :(

My frustration is here we are again. RC1 is behind us and all we have is a
list of suggestions for Fedora to develop (no Diana wiki page, no forum
posts, nothing). Other than the images on Diana's personal blog, I don't
have a clue what the vision of the default product is and RC2 is coming the
27th.

In my previous posts I did not intend to sound sour on "echo". I like
"echo". On my rc1 wiki page you will notice all of the icons I could change
have been changed to "echo". My suggestion was going to be FC7 artwork
should use "echo" even if the icons don't make FC7. I am in agreement "echo"
needs to work as well for KDE as it does for GDM.

Finally, based on the info of the theme wiki page we are technically at
round 3 and the team has completed its effort and again I say to those who
contributed with art and/or comments "job well done".

John
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