Hi Nicu! On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 17:23 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote: > On 12/03/2009 04:42 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote: > > What are the goals of your local community in promoting Linux? What kind > > of users are you promoting to? Are they more artistically-inclined? Or > > do they simply want more functionality than is available in a CD-based > > spin? > - freedom: when we indirectly suggest proprietary online apps (I was > told so earlier in this thread); Well, there is a school of thought that computing is moving from the desktop to the web and at some point the desktop won't matter as much. I am not sure how I feel about that. But, there are lots of free alternatives even with webapps, so driving functionality to the web doesn't have to mean going proprietary. > - friends: when our flagship spin is designed practically by a couple of > people inside their little universe and ignoring everyone else (like > nuking Nodoka); To be fair, Matthias has been asking for a lot of input on the fedora-desktop list (E.g., the recent post about default content) and trying to be good about announcing changes. Of course the communication could be better but to be fair Matthias and Jon have what I consider a huge workload outside of that. I think that the desktop spin doesn't have the same community around it that other spins have. I would like to see more contributors who buy into their vision for it step up and help out and help communicate about it as well. It's a chicken and egg problem - it's hard to build that community up without good communication, but it's hard to communicate without a community of folks to help out. I think to be really fair, we should assume that the communication problem is not intentional, and there isn't an intention to ignore anybody either. I think they are just overloaded with other work that has to be higher priority. I also think this is all more complex because the desktop spin is being stretched and shoehorned into fitting purposes that are at odds with each other, as it is the default spin. Even if Matthias and Jon have a vision for it that plenty of people don't agree with it, the important thing is that there is a vision at all - there was not before. It's important to have a vision, and for the uses that don't fall within that vision, let's figure out a solution for those as well. > I think GIMP is only a symptom, not the single problem. Honestly, I > would be happier with Inkscape getting at last on the install DVD, where > we have about 1GB of unused space. Would it be possible to put together an audit of the best-of-class software like Inkscape you think should be on the install DVD? I think it would be a useful document. > > - the Desktop spin's goal is perhaps a clean& simple / finely-honed > > collection of a basic desktop experience for basic desktop productivity > > common across multiple domains without much domain-specific content; > > And it's users are not the people from which we are expecting to come > back to the project and contribute. Most of them will not even bother to > search the web and learn which additional application they can install. I think it's okay though, if they don't contribute, or at least, if they don't contribute back right away. For example, as you know I will be teaching a group of middle school students using open source software. I would love to see more schools using open source software - but we cannot expect the students, who may not even be of age to legally contribute back, to contribute right away. Rather we want to spread the FOSS so they are aware of it. They can 'contribute' by spreading the word and telling other people about it, and building a buzz around it. For me, if a student I teach Inkscape to then goes on to graduate and uses Inkscape in high school and college and shares it with their friends and writes about it on Facebook or wherever - I think that would be amazing. While I think it would be wonderful if the student also signed up for the Fedora design team and started helping us make icons and banners and such - it's not necessary. To spread Inkscape and Fedora is enough. Anyhow, the target users for the desktop spin certainly can and I think will share it with others, and in that way they really would be contributing back because they are spreading the message of open source for us. That's one of our mission statement goals - to spread open source software. I think we need these types of users to survive. > > - this new spin's goal is to show off the best-of-the-best free and open > > source desktop applications across many domains. It would be more like a > > hall-of-fame kind of spin. > > Yes, that is more like something I would use to introduce people to > FLOSS, a disk with applications that will make their lives better, where > they can discover awesome stuff. It seems like maybe we should have a different spin for that, then. It's a different goal and is a little at odds with the Desktop spin goal I think. What is the diff between the two do you think? What applications should be added? ~m _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
