Hey again, I can understand where people from but all those comments
overlook something easy and it goes down to that: "we don't have enough
developpers to reply to every bug report, explain every change which is
done, and talk to every community members in Ubuntu", the community is
just an order or magnitude over the design,hackers base we have.


> But, looking at the vast majority of the comments on these bugs, the 
> substance of the complaint seems entirely different: a strong sense of being 
> left behind by Ubuntu.

Right, we are sorry about that but it's like any organisation (you can
take governements as an example), while people in charge care (or should
care, no need to sidetrack in politics ;-) they can talk to every single
person they represent, it's not bad willing, it's just that one person
can talk to millions of people individually


> It's not that you're saying "we can't fix this," it's that you're saying, 
> quite explicitly: "We won't; and we won't accept patches; and we won't 
> acknowledge the underlying problems; and we won't offer alternative 
> solutions; and we won't tell you what our plans are, if any, that disallow 
> this; and we won't tell you why."

Can you point to a bug where that has been said? I'm reading hundred of
bugs every and I can say it's not what happen. Often design use
"wontfix" saying that they ack there is an issue but it's not one that
can be adressed in the coming cycles seeing the backlog we already have
and the manpower to work on it. You can take the "dash screen should be
customizable" as an example (bug #885738) where John took the time to
explain:

"Given the time and resource constraints we have to work with, and also
because 12.04 is a LTS (for LTSs we try to avoid introducing major new
functional areas), it will not be possible to build a great Dash home
configuration story in this cycle. However if (and it is a big *if*) we
get the time/resource to look at this area in the future, we will review
this thread and use all the valuable input and ideas yourself and others
have provided to help to kick off the design process."


> In GNOME 3, they can close a bug by saying "Well, this is outside of our 
> vision, so it's better handled as an extension." And now they're even 
> actively endorsing these extensions, with an impressively friendly site.

Let's not get sidetracked on that, it's not fair to judge the Unity
project as not open because its code based has not beeing designed to be
modifiable at runtime the way gnome-shell has. While it's great and some
users will love it, it also has drawbacks (talk to the mozilla guys
about how much complains they are getting about firefox stability which
are not due to bugs in firefox but in third party code, having a way to
"hack" your shell is also not a replacement for having a good usable
experience by default)

> Look at all those commits! But, it's doomed to fail, and we all know
it: he will not be able to always keep his fork well-merged with the
Unity trunk. Forks are great in many cases, but this is exactly that
situation where you want to keep the main binary intact and allow for
extensions. But, Golikov did not stop at the "won't fix". He saw a
community need, and stepped up to the plate on his own time.

Right, there is for sure good work and great energy in the community and
there is no doubt Unity could be open to extra changes, with an infinite
manpower we would fix any bug and support any options requested, in real
world the manpower is very far to be infinite and an agenda has to be
set, work has to be done in order until we get a least a solid basis,
they it will be easier to review extra suggestions

> I've been following the multiple-monitor issue as closely as I can as
an outsider, and I still have absolutely no idea how Unity is going to
solve it, if at all, for 12.04.

The multimonitor work in 12.04 is mostly bug fixing work, you can follow a good 
part of what is coming on this blueprint!
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-p-multi-monitor

There is probably a bunch of unity ux bugs also on the topic

> You originally closed the bug for the movable Launcher because you
said you wanted to keep the Dash button close to the Launcher. Since
they are now united, it seems that your original reason is gone. But,
nobody has told *us* what the new reason is for the Launcher to stay on
the left.

Right, it has been shipped with the bfb on the panel for one cycle, user 
testing and design iteration moved it to the launcher. It's not that nobody 
*told* you, it's that nobody know,knew exactly. 
Design is a dynamic process, it requires experiments and iterations, you learn 
from trying things and see how users react, that tweak it to fix the issues you 
spotted with the first round. 

> What is this "vision"?

Is there a vision? Why do you assume there is one which is just not
communicated to you? Design has ideas on where they want to go but they
didn't "study" enough the field there and experiment enough to have a
"vision" yet, they are still in the process of thinking and playing with
the ideas to see where to go

> And, nobody told *us* what people with multiple monitors (or speakers
of right-to-left languages) should do.

Right, nobody knows, how could they tell you? That's something known to
be broken and needing work and which is scheduled to be addressed this
cycle, there is no bad willing there, just again lot to do and very few
people to do it, all topics can't be tracked at the same time, things
will come in due course over time

> This, of course, reminded me of when Ubuntu moved the window
decoration button to the left, opaquely talking about a "vision" that
was never elaborated. And that was the point where I suddenly realized
the real, endemic problem, and opened this bug about community
engagement.

That one has nothing to do with the current unity design, it's something
Mark decided on using his sabdfl rights, let's not use that special case
in this discussion

> I would suggest that the 15/16 fix rate is due not only to the
diligence of the programmers, but also to the care by which the Ubuntu
community opens these bugs on Launchpad, tends to them, responds, etc.

The reason I looked at those stats, and the bottom line is to show that
bugs get fixed, works get done, and Unity designers, hackers and
packagers do care about the community and spend hours every day to
interact with the community.

> I participate in many free software projects, and of course much of
that work is in bug triaging, but a lot of effort goes to communicating
with the opener of the bug. (Some would call that effort "wasted," but
that's exactly the attitude that I'm trying to fight here.) I can
honestly say that I'm impressed by how well, on a whole, bugs are
*opened* in Ubuntu.

I'm not sure what your point is, we do communicate on bugs, I spend tens
of hours every month triaging bugs, and that include commenting on them
with rationals, explaining changes, pointing issues that seems like we
should fix to the hackers working on the code, pointing bugs we should
milestone to the release manager, pointing design issues to the
designers. Do you say that the work I and other are doing is not enough?
Well I'm sorry but for one triager,hacker,design there is probably 10
000 users, do you think I don't care because I'm able to have a close
conversation with only 15 users a week and then I "ignored" the
remaining 9 985 other ones?

It would be good if the community would stop assuming bad willing from
other community members and players (including Canonical employees)
where the issue is mostly that the Ubuntu community is just too dynamic
for us to be able to keep up with everything which is asked or said

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/882274

Title:
  Community engagement is broken

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