Hi Máirín,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 11:03 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
So there's a few things to consider here.... for example, the
GNOME
marketing team is actually engaged in an effort to create a series of
videos showing off different aspects of GNOME 3 for the launch (some
details here:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/Gnome3In30Seconds ...
I saw one of the videos at the Boston Summit but I'm not sure where they
are online, I'll look for a copy though - they are impressive!) If they
use the default GNOME wallpaper, but we use a different wallpaper,
there's a missed opportunity for shared materials there. E.g., we could
use the videos (which are openly licensed of course!) as part of our
website without having to modify them or re-shoot them.
It is true that KDE 4.5 shipped with a wallpaper that is strikingly
similar to the GNOME 3 wallpaper, but I've talked to a few KDE users and
it seems that it was not ever set as the default wallpaper for a KDE
release so it doesn't have the same brand attachment to KDE that the
GNOME 3 team is looking to achieve.
Another thing to think about is the larger struggle between upstreams'
branding and downstream branding. GNOME 3 isn't trying to produce a
desktop that shoves the GNOME foot in your face constantly and competes
with the Fedora brand. The GNOME logo really doesn't appear anywhere. I
think they are going for a more neutral look that won't override the
distro branding leading up to the desktop, and won't confuse users over
what they are using.
IMHO this would lessen Fedora's visual identity a lot.
Imagine you boot
a F15 Desktop Live and what you see is almost pristine GNOME 3 desktop.
Where's Fedora in it? Where's our own visual identity in it? Moreover,
KDE shipped our wallpaper with the 4.0 release, why should we treat
GNOME differently? Is it some new trend?
OK, so upstream wants to promote GNOME 3. I'm not a fan of gnome-shell
(quite the contrary), but let them do it. But why the visual identity?
It's the behaviour, the work-flow, the experience that makes GNOME 3
from end-user point of view, and it's the visual identity that makes our
distro Fedora from end-user POV (among other things, but the visual
identity is the first thing you see).
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to
ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should
be leaders in our area as well ;-)
Martin
PS: If majority would support us shipping default GNOME 3 wallpaper as
our default in GNOME 3 "spin", instead of having it in prominent place
in bg-chooser applet, I'd yield.