Re: [Usability] Better look Re: (no subject)

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 14:33 +0200, Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> On 12/14/05, Josue Farde <josuefrade sapo pt> wrote:
> > thanks kalle
> >
> > but does that means that there isn't a responsable person for all
> > that???
> >
> 
> GNOME is open source, driven by the community :)
> 
> I'm not actually sure if anyone has the ultimate power regarding this
> matter, it really needs to be a consensus.

Well now, actually, we wallowed in our community consensus
attempts for two release cycles without getting anything
accomplished.  Everybody liked a different shade of blue.
The insanity finally stopped when I put my foot down and
declared ClearLooks our new default theme.

I don't maintain gnome-themes, gtk-engines, or any other
relevant package.  What qualified me to make that call
is that I lead our documentation efforts.  I was tired
of the screenshot madness, so I made the call.

Any proposal to change the default theme is guaranteed
to be met with a long mailing list discussion about why
people like what, how that shade of yellow reminds them
of a traumatic childhood experience, and how the radius
of the rounded corners shouldn't be determined without
extensive psychological testing of our users.

End of the day, somebody just has to make the decision.
There are maybe a dozen people in the Gnome community
that can actually make that decision and have people
listen to them.  And I'm not likely to take up that
fight a second time.

--
Shaun