An open letter to CreatureS team

[Сергей]

Greetings to all members of CreatureS team!

I'm writing because another release of Ubuntu Furry Remix has just arrived, and it shows how similar are its goals to the goals of CreatureS. But having two separate efforts to solve one problem is not the right way to solve problems, especially in the free software community. But before I get to the point, I have to explain some recent doings in the Remix project.

The latest release of Furry Remix, 10.04, goes beyond theming into functionality. We have improved the artwork-related software stack greatly, by bringing the best "foreign" achievements to the user and also by pieces of our own code. We have even started exploring the opportunities of furry software with Cricetida gallery downloader. But by this we have broken the boundaries of Ubuntu remix, and therefore need a new name, and probably new goals and new infrastructure.

I believe that by combining our efforts we can achieve much more than we can achieve by working separately. The project also proves that using a good base and replacing the components you doesn't like one by one is more effective than starting entirely from scratch. So I propose to merge the CreatureS and Ubuntu Furry Remix projects under a new name, to create an OS that combines the best of both projects.

I'm sorry I don't know your names, but I want each of you to consider my offer. Even if we won't be able to fully combine our efforts, it would be great to share at least some of the components. Libre culture is driven by collaboration, not competition.

What say you?

Respectfully,
--
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff, the former lead of Ubuntu Furry Remix project

[Theyain Riyu]

The OpenFur development team has met together and have come to a
decision. In a nearly unanimous vote our group has agreed to merge
ourselves and our project(s) with that of the Ubuntu Furry Remix team.
Notwithstanding our choice, there are some conditions we would like meet.

One of these conditions is that after the two teams merge, the resulting
team should use the CreatureS name. Our reasons are as follows:

-----

One, from what we've seen our name is as easily well known if not more
so then UFM. We've mentioned in different furry news letters, have held
large art contests (in the early days of the project), and have even
been tweeted by Dragoneer, the owner of FA. We also have a some what
large amount of reoccurring unique visitors (approx. 600 or more) each
month.

By both parties having to change our name, the new team will inarguably
lose some of its public awareness. There is also the fact that the
domain names Creaturesystem.org and openfur.org are already own and paid
for in full for the next year or so. Which would be a financial lose on
our part if we were to change the name. This is a huge advantage of
having a url like the one your team has simply for the fact that its
more professional looking.

Another reason is that name changes can be a bad thing. Changing the
name of a project too many times (we've already changed our name once
before) can cause people to loose interest and faith. It's been known
to happen with well know brands, so why wouldn't it happen to a small
time distro?

-----

The other condition is more of a suggestion. We've come up with the
idea of still using Ubuntu, but strip it down, removing Ubuntu reworked
packages and replacing them with the Debian packages that came before
them. The reason for this is that as of late Ubuntu has been playing
around with how the system's GUI looks and feels. We're not talking
about the themes, but the system tweaks that are supposedly for
enhancing the user experience (eg, the KiB and KB screwup, among others).

The reasoning behind this is that while it is possible to change some
things in the back end to undo these adjustments, our own changes are
nothing more then amateurish workarounds. Removing and replacing the
problem(atic) packages is a far more lasting and professional solution.
It ensures that the problem doesn't crop back up later and is far
cleaner. Not to mention workarounds only work until Canonical changes
how ever they do what we're trying to work around.

To maintain such a system would be trivial. All we would have to do is
create a ppa for the replacement packages and include said ppa in the
sources. That way the users can have the latest security & bug fixes,
while we are still able to provide them with the environment we believe
and hope is what they want.

Those are our two stipulations. However there is one topic that we all
strongly feel must be discussed between all of us in a more real time
manor (i.e. irc); and that is selection of a desktop shell. Actually,
if its possible, we would like to be able talk about all three topics
discussed in this reply (name, base, and shell) in irc.

We would like to thank you for the offer and hope that we can all come
to an agreeable arrangement.

Sincerely

The OpenFur Dev Team

We would like to apologize for the delay in replying. Some of our team
member's personal lives have been hellish as of late, resulting in the
delays you see here.

[Xorrito]

Well we should agree on a time to chat (i am consius that i am only replying to our team, so i dont do sonething out of time)

[Сергей]

2011/2/23 Theyain Riyu <theyai...@gmail.com>

The OpenFur development team has met together and have come to a decision.  In a nearly unanimous vote our group has agreed to merge ourselves and our project(s) with that of the Ubuntu Furry Remix team.  Notwithstanding our choice, there are some conditions we would like meet.

 

I'm very glad to hear it! I'm sure we'll come to an agreement.
 

One of these conditions is that after the two teams merge, the resulting team should use the CreatureS name.  Our reasons are as follows:

-----

One, from what we've seen our name is as easily well known if not more so then UFM.  We've mentioned in different furry news letters, have held large art contests (in the early days of the project), and have even been tweeted by Dragoneer, the owner of FA.  We also have a some what large amount of reoccurring unique visitors (approx. 600 or more) each month.

By both parties having to change our name, the new team will inarguably lose some of its public awareness.  There is also the fact that the domain names Creaturesystem.org and openfur.org are already own and paid for in full for the next year or so.  Which would be a financial lose on our part if we were to change the name.  This is a huge advantage of having a url like the one your team has simply for the fact that its more professional looking.

 

Another reason is that name changes can be a bad thing.  Changing the name of a project too many times (we've already changed our name once before) can cause people to loose interest and faith.  It's been known to happen with well know brands, so why wouldn't it happen to a small time distro?

 

I agree that CreatureS brand has some public awareness. But I'm afraid it may create mis-awareness after the projects merge.
Changing brand reflects the change of philosophy: you switched from Furbuntu to CreatureS because the philosophy has changed. Now it changes again, and the very core of the project is changing too. It's not the CreatureS that was mentioned in different news letters anymore, it's a very different OS. I'm afraid keeping the name will create misunderstanding.

Moreover, CreatureS brand is controversial. I'm afraid too many people lost faith in CreatureS due to lack of actual tangible achievements. And not many people believe in "based-on-nothing" distribution with which CreatureS brand is associated. So changing brand is more likely to restore faith in the project.

Finally, it's not that hard to redirect people looking for Ubuntu Furry Remix or CreatureS to the new brand. Keeping the CreatureS and ufurmix web pages and putting large banners "merged into OpenFur" should redirect people quite efficiently. In addition, changing brand will generate additional buzz in news and blogs = raise awareness about any of the projects = raise awareness about the merged projects.
 

The other condition is more of a suggestion.  We've come up with the idea of still using Ubuntu, but strip it down, removing Ubuntu reworked packages and replacing them with the Debian packages that came before them.  The reason for this is that as of late Ubuntu has been playing around with how the system's GUI looks and feels.  We're not talking about the themes, but the system tweaks that are supposedly for enhancing the user experience (eg, the KiB and KB screwup, among others).

The reasoning behind this is that while it is possible to change some things in the back end to undo these adjustments, our own changes are nothing more then amateurish workarounds.  Removing and replacing the problem(atic) packages is a far more lasting and professional solution.  It ensures that the problem doesn't crop back up later and is far cleaner.  Not to mention workarounds only work until Canonical changes how ever they do what we're trying to work around.

To maintain such a system would be trivial.  All we would have to do is create a ppa for the replacement packages and include said ppa in the sources.  That way the users can have the latest security & bug fixes, while we are still able to provide them with the environment we believe and hope is what they want.

I guess every such change should be discussed on its own. Not all Ubuntu packages might be backwards-compatible with such changes. But if you can afford thorough testing, and the Debian packages will be mirrored to PPA on time with thorough testing, I can't see any encumbrances to this.

However, Ubuntu may apply more than one patch, and in many cases you'll fix one thing and break the other. Debian source packages are organized as upstream tarball + distribution patches, and those patches are very easy to install and remove. Ubuntu inherits the patches from Debian and sometimes adds its own. I suggest using Ubuntu packages as a base and removing the patches you don't like.

Those are our two stipulations.  However there is one topic that we all strongly feel must be discussed between all of us in a more real time manor (i.e. irc); and that is selection of a desktop shell.  Actually, if its possible, we would like to be able talk about all three topics discussed in this reply (name, base, and shell) in irc.

I agree that some real-time chat would be better for short and intense discussions. IRC is not newbie-friendly, but if you provide a web client working in OpenJDK, people won't have to deal with the "raw" IRC. If we won't be able to find such a client, I suggest Jabber/XMPP.

Regarding the meeting time, in Ubuntu Furry Remix team all people are from Europe (from GMT to GMT+3) and the USA (from MST/GMT-7 to GMT-5). I guess the upcoming weekend should be good enough.

We would like to apologize for the delay in replying.  Some of our team member's personal lives have been hellish as of late, resulting in the delays you see here.

I hope people on this list care more about the lives than about the delays. There's no need to apologize.

Respectfully,
--
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff

P.S. All of the above is a personal opinion, I don't represent the team in any way.

[Сергей]

The weekend is approaching quickly and we still have no meeting time proposals. So I propose 19:00 GMT/UTC this Sunday (27th of February). It seems to be acceptable to all participators I know of.

Also, we haven't arranged a meeting "place". CreatureS team has #fur-dev channel on FurNet, but FurNet doesn't have a web client so everybody will have to deal with the complexity of "raw" IRC, and I bet half of ufurmix team has never used IRC before. Probably we can set up a channel on Freenode, which has a web client? If not, I suggest using Jabber - for example, our ufu...@conference.jabber.ru room. It requires a Jabber account, but almost everybody has one nowadays (Google Talk, Facebook etc). Almost all distros have Pidgin or Empathy pre-installed nowadays, and setting them up is much easier than dealing with IRC.

[Xorrito]

Im not sure if i can make it, there is a school related event that i most attend. But im willing to give my phone # to text or talk about the project....although is not "group suported" :p ether way. Can we do this next week? It will give everyone enought time to prepare?

[Adam]

I can participate in IRC conference, but I haven't got any Jabber/XMPP comunicator installed.

2011/2/25 Xorrito <xor...@ufurmix.org>

[Сергей]

We got no reply from CreatureS team, so I'm afraid we'll have to wait till next weekend. Hope somebody will create a channel on Freenode or some other network with web client during the delay.

[Theyain Riyu]

Actually that is no longer favorable as another one of our team members is no longer able to make it.  This is not good and we are now in need of rescheduling.   Would next Sunday fit everyone's schedule? From what I know, one of your guys isn't able to make it either today.  So it would seem that this would be more beneficial to all if we do this next Sunday.

I would also like to say that the reason why we didn't respond to Сергей's message is that we were waiting for an official response from the group. 

On 02/27/2011 10:55 AM, Theyain Riyu wrote:

Sorry for the delay and short notice.  My personal life has been very demanding.  2 hours from now is 1900 GMT, which should be good for me and at least one other of our dev team members. 

[Сергей]

Yes, looks like next Sunday is better. I doubt you'll be able to meet everyone's schedule, though, but at least people will have a chance to rearrange something and participate.

Also, could you set up a channel in some IRC network that has a web client, like Freenode? This way more people will be able to participate.

2011/2/27 Theyain Riyu <theyai...@gmail.com>

[Theyain Riyu]

anthrochat.org has a webclient.О©╫ Very easy to use

On 02/27/2011 12:12 PM, О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫ wrote:

Yes, looks like next Sunday is better. I doubt you'll be able to meet everyone's schedule, though, but at least people will have a chance to rearrange something and participate.

Also, could you set up a channel in some IRC network that has a web client, like Freenode? This way more people will be able to participate.

2011/2/27 Theyain Riyu <theyai...@gmail.com>

Actually that is no longer favorable as another one of our team members is no longer able to make it.О©╫ This is not good and we are now in need of rescheduling. О©╫ Would next Sunday fit everyone's schedule? From what I know, one of your guys isn't able to make it either today.О©╫ So it would seem that this would be more beneficial to all if we do this next Sunday.

I would also like to say that the reason why we didn't respond to О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫'s message is that we were waiting for an official response from the group.О©╫

On 02/27/2011 10:55 AM, Theyain Riyu wrote:

Sorry for the delay and short notice.О©╫ My personal life has been very demanding.О©╫ 2 hours from now is 1900 GMT, which should be good for me and at least one other of our dev team members.

[Сергей]

Both clients seem to work OK on Firefox/OpenJDK. Good, let's set up a channel there.

27 февраля 2011 г. 21:22 пользователь Theyain Riyu <theyai...@gmail.com> написал:

anthrochat.org has a webclient.  Very easy to use

[Сергей]

I don't think anybody cares which network is used anyway.

27 февраля 2011 г. 21:32 пользователь Сергей <shna...@gmail.com> написал:

[Xorrito]

As long as it works

On Feb 27, 2011 12:01 PM, "Сергей" <shna...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think anybody cares which network is used anyway.

27 февраля 2011 г. 21:32 пользователь Сергей <shna...@gmail.com> написал:

>
> Both clients seem to work OK on Firefox/OpenJDK. Good, let's set up a channel there.
>

> 27 фев...

[Crazd Foxx]

I don’t like this at all... I don’t see what was wrong with our little team
we had going on here.

[Crazd Foxx]

why are we merging with creatureS?

[Xorrito]

more people, more support, more stuff

On Mar 3, 2011 2:56 AM, "Crazd Foxx" <craz...@hotmail.com> wrote:

why are we merging with creatureS?

 

From: Theyain Riyu

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 11:44 AM

To: Сергей ; ufu...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

Actually that is no longer favorable as another one of our team members is no longer able to make i...

[Сергей]

2011/3/3 Crazd Foxx <craz...@hotmail.com>

I don’t like this at all... I don’t see what was wrong with our little team we had going on here.

2011/3/3 Crazd Foxx <craz...@hotmail.com>

why are we merging with creatureS?

The team seemed like a one-man-band and its audience. That's the main problem. Also see this thread, particularly my first message. Theyain seems to be good at building communities/teams. Well, they never did anything tangible, but they are still more famous than us (even after 2 stable releases), for example, and have a team of 5 or 6 members that seem to communicate with each other sometimes (while this list can be silent for several months). You know, I always was bad at communicating with other people, so "scrape content generated by other team members" task was always the hardest thing for me, harder than writing code or even writing copyright notices. But nobody could do it for me, because people knew only me and didn't know anybody else from the team, and team members didn't know about each others work. So I hope the team will become more decentralized after the merge and people will feel more involved. And I believe it will help us build a better distro and, more importantly, enjoy the process.

In addition, the more people are involved, the more and better ideas, code, art the project has (unless the project sinks in bureaucracy*). So I hope it also will do us only good.


*sometimes you have to make a decision just for the sake of quickly making a decision. If you argue what desktop shell to use for too long, you'll never release a distro at all. Unfortunately, some people are too ambitious and idealistic to see this, you'll have to use some eye-opening stuff (like this) in such cases.

[Crazd Foxx]

well... good luck with that. hope it goes well

 

From: Сергей

Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 7:37 AM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

[Crazd Foxx]

I think it will lose its furry ideals and a lot of great ideas will get pushed asside.  ive alreaady noticed a decline in the amount of actual furryness in the distros as the new ones come out... I believe with a larger group comes the sacrifice of some values and ideas

not like I was even contributing much at all but still. everyone seemed more worried about android skins than ufurmix for a period of time. that has nothing to do with ufurmix.

I think if we all actually focused on something thing and actually did it there would be no need to basically give the project away to creatureS and how can we work on stuff if no one is being assigned to anything...there should be a sign up sheet for a particular feature and whoever volunteers to do it should work on it. our problem is not with the number of people in our group, our reputation or our knowledge of linux. its with our organization.  now like I said the only thing I did was make some little screensaver. but I just thought I would voice my opinion.

 

From: Сергей

Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 7:37 AM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

[Сергей]

I think if we all actually focused on something thing and actually did it there would be no need to basically give the project away to creatureS and how can we work on stuff if no one is being assigned to anything...there should be a sign up sheet for a particular feature and whoever volunteers to do it should work on it. our problem is not with the number of people in our group, our reputation or our knowledge of linux. its with our organization.

Yes, I agree. Lack of knowledge is not a barrier because I knew nothing when I started to work on ufurmix. Moreover, I already have the knowledge and I'm willing to share it (I think I'm telling this all the time...), and Google is full of manuals.

Sign up sheet? Lol. I tried that, doesn't work. Blueprints should be our sign up sheet for now, that's the main reason for having blueprints at all... But maybe a post in this group would work better in the beginning.

I also tried to contact some people personally and ask them to do thing X, but working alone is harder and much less fun, so no wonder this approach didn't work also. And, as I have already mentioned, I always was bad at communicating with other people.

So, as you can see, I have failed as an organizator. (more info on this topic here).

I think it will lose its furry ideals and a lot of great ideas will get pushed asside.  ive alreaady noticed a decline in the amount of actual furryness in the distros as the new ones come out...

Not all ideas get implemented (by definition). I was almost the only one to work on Lucid, we had more people working on Karmic and there was some activity after Karmic release, but then all activity died down (proof link).

As you can see, I prefer quality over furriness. I dropped the ugly and slightly furry window decorations seen in Karmic beta2 in favor of non-furry, but much prettier theme. CreatureS devs are more enthusiastic about creating a furry distro than about creating a good distro, so no worries here.

I believe with a larger group comes the sacrifice of some values and ideas

Well, we always have to sacrifice some values and ideas because we have limited resources. The question is what exactly we sacrifice. In Lucid I had to sacrifice "furriness" and theming for the sake of releasing the thing before it's too late. If I'd release it too late, work on Natty also would be delayed and we'd run behind schedule again.

Any ideas on fixing the organization? I guess we have meritocracy here, so people will follow you if you table something worthy.

Cheers,
--
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff

[Crazd Foxx]

as you say about sacrificing furriness...if you lose the furriness, doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the OS? if its not going to be furry why call it as such? if you lose that you completely defeat the point in a “furry operating system” im sorry but I see your logic in this decision but not the purpose.

 

From: Сергей

Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 6:38 AM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

I think if we all actually focused on something thing and actually did it there would be no need to basically give the project away to creatureS and how can we work on stuff if no one is being assigned to anything...there should be a sign up sheet for a particular feature and whoever volunteers to do it should work on it. our problem is not with the number of people in our group, our reputation or our knowledge of linux. its with our organization.

[Crazd Foxx]

I mean ive never even heard of creatureS and nothing shows up on google.

[Xorrito]

Before i actually heard about ufurmix i actually stumbled upon creatures but i saw (at the time) that it was ghost-ware. Then months latter (i think) i heard of ufurmix.

On Mar 4, 2011 1:42 PM, "Crazd Foxx" <craz...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I mean ive never even heard of creatureS and nothing shows up on google.

 

From: Crazd Foxx

Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 2:40 PM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

as you say about sacrificing furriness...if you lose the furriness, doesn’t that defeat the whole p...

[Crazd Foxx]

I actually think I might have an idea for fixing our organization without giving away to creatureS...

decide in 1 day every week that we all sign into a IM service of some kind. there we would have a conference about what needs to be done, the progress of the project and when it should be done. also files ideas and votes can be taken during this time.

then the following week between conferences people of the team will work on what was talked about.

[Xorrito]

Well im up for anything.

On Mar 4, 2011 1:49 PM, "Crazd Foxx" <craz...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I actually think I might have an idea for fixing our organization without giving away to creatureS...

decide in 1 day every week that we all sign into a IM service of some kind. there we would have a conference about what needs to be done, the progress of the project and when it should be done. also files ideas and votes can be taken during this time.

then the following week between conferences people of the team will work on what was talked about.

 

From: Xorrito

Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 2:45 PM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

Before i actually heard about ufurmix i actually stumbled upon creatures but i saw (at the time) t...

[Crazd Foxx]

well, if everyone is onboard with that idea then we need everyone to agree on a time and service to use for this.

I say either windows live or yahoo IM and also maybe on thrsday evenings.

any other ideas?

[Xorrito]

How about gchat? The one that comes with @ufurmix.org

On Mar 4, 2011 1:57 PM, "Crazd Foxx" <craz...@hotmail.com> wrote:

well, if everyone is onboard with that idea then we need everyone to agree on a time and service to use for this.

I say either windows live or yahoo IM and also maybe on thrsday evenings.

any other ideas?

 

 

From: Xorrito

Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 2:51 PM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

Well im up for anything.
>
> On Mar 4, 2011 1:49 PM, "Crazd Foxx" <craz...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>...

[Crazd Foxx]

alright.. that’s a good possibility.

From: Xorrito

Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 3:06 PM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

[Xorrito]

My phone is actually configured with ufurmix

On Mar 4, 2011 2:08 PM, "Crazd Foxx" <craz...@hotmail.com> wrote:

alright.. that’s a good possibility.

From: Xorrito

Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 3:06 PM

To: ufu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ufurmix] Re: An open letter to CreatureS team

 

How about gchat? The one that comes with @ufurmix.org
>

> On Mar 4, 2011 1:57 PM, "Crazd Foxx" <cr...