Re: The status of desktop-base in wheezy

[Ulrich Hansen <uhansen@debianart.org>]

Hi,

thanks for the summary of what went right and what went wrong. 

I agree with most of it.

 I got convinced of doing it differently: nominating a group of people (a
"committee", if you want) that would've taken the decision.

A Jury. That's a classic way to decide a contest. I think a lot of people would like that. Of course Debian has so many "fans", it might also be a nice idea to "risk" giving them the decision. But that's just my opinion. 

 I'm concerned because what
happened gets in the way of the ability of we, Debian "packagers", to
work with Debian "artists". I'm really sorry. But that's what happened.

Contributing actually was a lot of fun. I loved doing that spaceship. :-) OK, more feedback would have been helpful, maybe that's something that could be organized next time. But the only thing that really sucked was that after months of work by the "artists" and not much feedback of the "packagers", all of a sudden it was like "OK, we run out of time, I just take that one, thanks, goodbye." Although the chosen artwork is a nice one, that was a bit abrupt. I know Paul didn't intend that.

 I disagree it's wasted time all together; as I mentioned above
  we need different proposals to make a choice, that's useful
  contribution already.

Thanks for pointing that out. I might have been a bit harsh.

 On the other hand, we should (and could)
  minimize the sensation of wasted time, by shipping alternative
  proposals and make it technically easy to change theme, distro-wide,
  in a given Debian release.

To be helpful here, Ronoaldo Pereira and I have been working for quite some nights (and a few days) to realize "desktop-theme-packages" (which depend on an installed desktop-base-7.0). Maybe anyone likes to take a look?

https://bitbucket.org/ronoaldo/desktop-theme-growing/downloads

So far, we have a working prototype and a repository. And *if* Holger Levsen likes what he finds, we even might have a sponsor. :-) Hopefully...

The prototype uses Franz Gratzers "growing" artwork. But there was also some other nice artwork in the contest. We have already contacted some of the artists. The idea is to make each artwork available as separate installable package. So some of the artwork can still be of practical use and everybody still has a choice.

Please have a look. Feedback is welcome.

Best wishes

Ulrich