----- Original Message -----
From: "Bastien Nocera" bnocera@redhat.com To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2016 10:43:17 AM Subject: Re: I asked Hacker News what developers want from a desktop, and this is what they said
----- Original Message -----
It is good that you care about the products, but you can't be unaware that doing things like filing that bugzilla entry for that spinner bug halfway into a discussion comes off as very aggressive and uncollaborative?
Certainly not. You're assuming the worst in me, and I would expect that members of the Fedora community would assume people mean well. I linked to the discussion, I linked the discussion to the bug, I'm pretty sure the maintainer of the package reads this list (or should!) and can verify that the consensus is towards that, and I'm making sure that the bug doesn't just stay there because "nobody had the time to look into it" by providing a patch that could fix this problem.
I think that looking into what could be technical hurdles early in discussions is something required not to hit a wall when implementing them. This is exactly what I did. And I really thought there was consensus.
As for designers not having enough time, I would beg to differ about that being the problem here. We been having these branding discussions for at least 3 years now if not more, which I think should be more than enough time for anyone. I been trying to push things along at multiple instances, I even tried setting up a branding working group years ago with various designers in the hope they could find a holistic solution to address the needs in both Fedora and RHEL. For various reasons that effort did not really resolve anything either. What has happened every time, and I definitely deserve the blame for not making sure we kept on this, is that we end up having a flare-up shortly before each release, end up doing something that is doable within that short timeframe, leaving nobody really happy; and then drop the ball waiting for the next flare up at a later release.
So if you want to own this problem and ensure we have a proper solution finally that is great, but you have to do it by making sure you speak to Fedora and RHEL stakeholders and ensure there is actual agreement that this resolves our needs for the long term as opposed to be another bandaid for the next release, because I think we both agree there has been enough of those.
I'm happy to own the problem as long as, as mentioned in the mail to Stephen, "Fedora" trusts GNOME to do what's right for the distributors, and we don't get those knee-jerk logo slapping reaction, but constructive feedback.
If you want Fedora or anyone else to trust GNOME to know what is best in terms of building the distribution brand then you need to show that helping distributions building their individual brands is a top priority for GNOME. Maybe such discussions have been had or that there is a document showing how GNOME envision distributions building their own brands while shipping GNOME, but I have not seen that yet.
We also need to be able to quantify what success would be.
Putting the burden on GNOME, and the Fedora version of GNOME to carry all the branding of the distribution for Fedora Workstation is unfair, IMO.
Well GNOME is providing us with the 'face' of the distribution, so for better or worse it is where such things naturally would go. Its kinda like how putting a tattoo on your skin has a lot bigger impact on peoples perception or idea about you than what brand of hip replacement you have, even though a hip replacement surgery is a ton more intrusive than getting a tattoo.
Having a Fedora blue hue to the default shell-prompt is likely more recognisable and more generally useful a downstream change than the boot logo. See how well the Linux tux logo is recognised as the airplane media centre sign for failure.
I agree with this, that branding doesn't need to be about logo slapping, just figuring out design elements that makes us individually recognizable from others. So for instance an idea I had was that instead of slapping a logo on the activities bar somewhere, maybe something subtler like a faint background swirl along it would be more effective and less in your face. That is just a random idea though, not a demand from me that is the final solution.
Christian
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