Re: Artwork conversations

I'll jump in this discussion as a relative outsider, and
start by
saying that I am not an artist by any stretch of
imagination. I am
not going to comment on the quality of any artwork either. 

I'm not going to reply to the many long emails in this
conversation
in detail, but I'd like to respond to this quote, which I
think is
indicative of some of the misunderstandings that have
happened:

"[all we can do is] sit back and each 6 months when a
new version is
released act as fanboys and worship the great powers that
brought us the
graphics"

No, not at all. Instead find a channel to get your art in
people's
hands. 

Focusing narrowly on the default, branded theme that ships
with the next
Fedora release is probably not the best way to achieve that.
Also,
striving for the overarching, unified experience "from
cradle to grave"
or rather from anaconda to background makes it much harder
than it has
to be. Many of the pieces of a "full branding kit"
are seen only once
(if at all) by our users (anaconda, firstboot, etc). On the
flip side,
the parts that people see all the time on their desktops
(gtk theme,
window manager theme, background, icons) are easy to package
up and get
into Fedora as a standalone package. 

Another point is that almost all the proposals that have
been discussed
on this list are heavily branded. The heavy branding in FC5
(and to a
lesser extent, FC6) was necessary to introduce the new
Fedora logo.
But I think that longer-term, it would be much better to
produce themes
that are less branded and can stand on their own because of
their
quality as a theme, not because they have the necessary
branding to
become the default Fedora theme. And we could really use
more
high-quality non-branded themes, e.g. to make it easier for
those who
create derived distributions and need to strip out the
Fedora branding.

It is also worth pointing out that you do not even have to
package
your theme as an rpm; the theme capplet allows
drag-and-drop
installation of themes from tarballs that can e.g. be
published
at art.gnome.org. Currently this does not include cursor
theme, 
background and login screen, but that will hopefully change
at some
point.

Regarding Echo - nobody disagrees that it is incomplete,
maybe more so
than some other icon themes that we ship (none of them is
"complete"
though, that notion is not even well-defined). But the
"open source" 
way is to release early and often, and let things develop
out in the
open. Which is exactly what we are doing with Echo.

Finally, some emails in this conversation have expressed the
idea 
that doing open source implies doing everything out in the
open and 
by direct democracy. That is very far from the truth. I
recommend 
writing a kernel patch and trying to get it in the kernel to
get rid
of this notion...


Matthias

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Matthias Clasen wrote:
> 
> I'm not going to reply to the many long emails in this
conversation
> in detail, but I'd like to respond to this quote, which
I think is
> indicative of some of the misunderstandings that have
happened:
> 
> "[all we can do is] sit back and each 6 months
when a new version is
> released act as fanboys and worship the great powers
that brought us the
> graphics"
> 
> No, not at all. Instead find a channel to get your art
in people's
> hands. 

That was my quote and I exaggerated a bit to make my point
clearer. Of 
course I have an alternative channel, my personal website
have a section 
with various Fedora artwork and it receive a healthy amount
of traffic 
and noticeable search engine rankings [1].
Of course the default matters but I also think some
alternative channel 
should be *inside* the project, otherwise it may be
considered a fork 
and I think forking the community should be done only as the
last resort.

> Focusing narrowly on the default, branded theme that
ships with the next
> Fedora release is probably not the best way to achieve
that. Also,
> striving for the overarching, unified experience
"from cradle to grave"
> or rather from anaconda to background makes it much
harder than it has
> to be. Many of the pieces of a "full branding
kit" are seen only once
> (if at all) by our users (anaconda, firstboot, etc). On
the flip side,
> the parts that people see all the time on their
desktops (gtk theme,
> window manager theme, background, icons) are easy to
package up and get
> into Fedora as a standalone package. 

In my opinion, and I don't talk now the first time about it,
the holy 
grail is something like "Background Channels" [2],
allowing anyone to 
publish and anyone to use and I think such a service should
be hosted by 
Fedora. In the past I even suggested ccHost [3] as an engine
for serving 
such content.

> Another point is that almost all the proposals that
have been discussed
> on this list are heavily branded. The heavy branding in
FC5 (and to a
> lesser extent, FC6) was necessary to introduce the new
Fedora logo.
> But I think that longer-term, it would be much better
to produce themes
> that are less branded and can stand on their own
because of their
> quality as a theme, not because they have the necessary
branding to
> become the default Fedora theme. And we could really
use more
> high-quality non-branded themes, e.g. to make it easier
for those who
> create derived distributions and need to strip out the
Fedora branding.

Yes, all the proposals are heavily branded but at the same
time it seems 
the majority of contributors agree about reducing branding.
What can I see about derived distributions? The large
majority of the 
proposals (not the "winning" one) have available
the source code as SVG, 
so is easy to customize and remove branding.
Also, I would *love* to see makers of the derived distros
coming to the 
list and asking for customized graphics.
But the ultimate form of the branding is not the logo usage
but the 
usage of the Fedora blue, so my feeling is that a derived
distro should 
better use a completely revamped theme for a strong
identity.


[1] - 
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicubunu/S
creenshots/photo#5033134774425278466
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicubunu/S
creenshots/photo#5033134774425278482
[2] - http://www.gnome.org/~clarkbw/blog/GNOME/background_
channels
[3] -http://wiki.cr
eativecommons.org/CcHost

-- 
nicu
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.n
icubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org

my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro

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