Remove Tango-artists mailinglist from FreeDesktop.org

[Christian Neumair]

Vlad C. wrote:
>Hi,
>
>The Tango Project (http://tango-project.org), which is
>developing an icon theme very similar to the current
>Gnome theme, is attempting to establish itself as the
>Free Desktop “standard”.
>
>As of October 26, 2005 the Tango Project mailinglist
>is hosted on FreeDesktop.org:
>http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/
>
>On the Tango website, it says: 
>“Style guideline matters, artistic workflows and all
>other artistic aspects of the Tango project can be
>discussed in the Tango-artists mailing list. The
>naming spec matters are best discussed on the xdg
>mailing list.”
>
>I don't think FreeDesktop.org is the appropriate place
>to discuss “style guideline matters, artistic
>workflows and all other artistic aspects” since these
>are too subjective and will naturally vary between
>different desktop environments. I'm afraid that all
>other themes -- including KDE 4's Oxygen theme
>(http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Oxygen) -- will be looked
>down upon as nonstandard and second-rate. 
>
>Also, the Tango-artists mailinglist isn't essential to
>and falls outside of FreeDesktop.org's scope of
>providing “interoperability and shared technology for
>X Window System desktops”. 
>
>Hosting the Tango-artists mailinglist on
>FreeDesktop.org is nothing less than an attempt to
>impose Gnome's bland aesthetics on all other desktop
>environments, so I'd like to ask that it be removed
>from the FreeDesktop.org domain name.
>  

I don't agree with you. The tango project is a worthwile effort to bring 
UI consistency to UNIX desktops. The look and feel is an important 
aspect of desktop interoperability, and also includes icon themes. So 
any efforts towards icon theme unification have a positive impact on the 
desktop projects as a whole. While I also don't like the current Tango 
icon style, I think it can still be improved in later iterations. Why 
don't you join the Tango ML and make proposals?

I sometimes feel like many Fanboys out there just fear to loose their 
identity, which is always a side effect of unification, and don't really 
concentrate on issues. Let's join forces!