Community response of new ubuntu artwork

[Petri Pennanen]

Hello Bill!
Did you intend to me only or to the list? In evolution Ctrl + L lets you
reply to list.

On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 08:18 -0400, bill g wrote:
> Petri, we differ on basic issues.
> 
> I don't equate "professional" with unfriendly or inhuman. I equate it
> with competence, expertise and lack of amateur performance. Frankly,
> there's too much amateur behavior in the world of Linux.  I applaud
> the Ubuntu crew for trying something new -- it's well done and a lot
> better on that score than some of the homebrew login screens I've seen
> elsewhere.  But, as the posts here indicate, the typical initial
> reaction focuses on the models, which means the intended message is
> obscured or missed altogether.

Yes, I do realize that people reacted in another way than the folks at
Canonical probably hoped. My point (that perhaps got lost in all the
verbiage in my last mail) is that the idea is good (having a message
that is) but that the implementation didn't quite work. 

> I also don't think the desire for profit is the root of the world's
> miseries. Absent the possbility of reward, no one would work.  Absent
> the possibility of profit, no one could produce even the basic
> essentials to feed and clothe a growing population.  Economic
> resources must not only be sustained and replaced, they must be
> continually increased.  Pure profit is not the best means of
> distributing wealth and resources -- no one will market to those who
> can't afford to buy -- but it does work rather well to assure that the
> dsitribution channel is constantly replenished.  The human conscience
> is not so good at doing that, which is why I think adopting a
> "philosophy" for an operating system is more than a bit silly.

I didn't write that the desire for profit is the root of the world's
miseries, neither do I belive it is. Capitalism is to this time the most
effective distributor of wealth, and desire for profit drives a great
deal of that. What I'm saying is that desire for profits discoupled from
everything else will lead to problems. 

Take enviromental problems for example. A free market capitalism can not
deal sucessfully with enviromental issues since many ecosystem services
(like the generation of oxygen or the ability to absorb waste) lack
owners and can't be bought and sold. This makes "the invisible hand"
unable to regulate prices. Eventually you get a situation where you
damge the enviroment, but it is a competitive disadvatage to do
something about it unless your competitor does it too (google for
"Tragedy of the Commons"). If you only think about the (short term)
profit you will get a race to the bottom.

In cases like these, wich exists in many other issues than the
enviromental ones (recall, for instance, how many factories have ben
closed even though they were making a profit leaving thousands
unemployed), ethics come in to play. What I was getting at in my
original mail was that you should not discouple ethics - the idea of
"humanity onto others" - from the desire for profit. That will leave you
unable to choose the practice that you and others benefit form in the
long term.

Ubuntu strives to get a big userbase, increasing profit if you will.
Having a theme that scares away potential users would have a negative
impact on this goal. The ethical goal is to get people thinking about
how they treat others. It will also be negatively impacted by a smaller
userbase, but more so if it is left out of the distro. What a theme
should do is to make he ethics visible without driving away users. In
the optimal case - that I think Ubuntu should be striving for - the
ethics and the theme/art will set ubuntu apart making it appeal to a
greter userbase.

Granted, the impact a theme can make is marginal at best. But it is as I
wrote before, in the right direction. Mahatma Gandhi once wrote that "we
must be the change we want to see". I wholehartedly agree.

- Petri

PS. For all of yo that are getting tired of this I promise that this
mail is the last one from me on this topic. DS