FESCo Meeting Summary for 20090424

[William Jon McCann]

Hi Spot,

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway
<tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
> On 04/30/2009 03:08 PM, William Jon McCann wrote:
>> Look, calling our design the "Brave New World mixer" doesn't
>> particularly make you come across as someone we should be listening
>> to.  And frankly, if you can't see why it is dumb to have two entries
>> in the menu for controlling your sound and volume then well maybe we
>> shouldn't be listening to you.
>
> Remember kids, we probably shouldn't be listening to you. Red Hat
> Desktop == Smart. You == Dumb.

Should have been obvious that I wasn't saying that.  You should know better.

There is nothing about the current discussion that has anything to do
with good ideas only coming from Red Hat or the Desktop team.  One of
the codesigners of this interface works for Canonical.  The people who
we listen to are individuals who have proven themselves to be capable
(often through community contributions) or those who can express or
demonstrate new and interesting ideas.  One of the problems with this
list in particular is that many of these people have been driven away.

I know this very well as someone who lurked on this list for many
years before being hired by Red Hat.  The list was overwhelmed by
noise with a continuously decreasing amount of signal.  Trust me,
there are people out there in the community who want to be part of the
process but want nothing to do with the bikeshedding and base level of
debate that often occurs here.  Being able to clearly identify good
ideas and reject bad ones is important for community health.
Honestly, painting the debate as somehow us versus them is detrimental
to community health.

Thanks,
Jon