Comment 104 for bug 882274

I would like to humbly quote from someone who once made a very passionate argument for diversity, openness, and knowing how to embrace different ideas from the contributor and user community in a project:

> This is a critical juncture for the leadership of Gnome. I’ll state
> plainly that I feel the long tail of good-hearted contributors to
> Gnome and Gnome applications are being let down by a decision-making
> process that has let competitive dynamics diminish the scope of Gnome
> itself. Ideas that are not generated “at the core” have to fight
> incredibly and unnecessarily hard to get oxygen. Ask the Zeitgeist
> team. Federico is a hero, but getting room for ideas to be explored
> should not feel like a frontal assault on a machine gun post.
>
> This is no way to lead a project. This is a recipe for a project that
> loses great people to environments that are more open to different
> ways of seeing the world. Elementary. Unity.
>
> Embracing those other ideas and allowing them to compete happily and
> healthily is the only way to keep the innovation they bring inside
> your brand. Otherwise, you’re doomed to watching them innovate and
> then having to “relayout” your own efforts to keep up, badmouthing
> them in the process.

-- Mark Shuttleworth, 2011-03-10, http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/654

It is a shame that the same thoughts are not applied to Unity itself. It would certainly be nice to see ideas not generated at the [Unity] core not being shot down like soldiers charging against a machine gun post. It would have been nice to see something positive come out of this discussion, which was clearly started with a positive intent and with the goal of improving the overall product and experience for all concerned.

Just because there exist hostile and self-entitled people who flame and tear down everything without cause, that does not mean that everyone with a different idea is like that.