What do you mean with '++Up'?

True, but those communities do have a role, a responsibility: consumption and creating connections between various users. Without a defined goal, the community would be adrift.

I would find it sad, though, if the Ubuntu community were to move to such a state. Not that I ever expect it to become like that.

Bedankt voor de reactie, aangepast!

What is Apple doing then? ;)

Bedankt voor jullie reacties. Ik moet inderdaad goed bekijken wat ik wil en kan bijdragen aan Ubuntu Nederland. Inmiddels is het mechanisme tegen afwezige raadsleden deels in werking gesteld en zijn Keimpe en ik er al uit gezet. Er moeten nog wel nieuwe verkiezingen komen. Ik zal mij kandidaat stellen tijdens deze verkiezingen, maar het is aan de stemgerechtigden om te bepalen of ik nog te vertrouwen ben. Dat is goed, want ik heb mijn mandaat natuurlijk wel verspeeld zo.

So you would say that, instead of making do with the tools we currently have, we should improve the technology used for bug reporting? That seems like a very good solution to me, if we can figure out how we can improve the process.

It will take a lot of time and effort, what if that time and effort is not available? Most of the spending goes to desktop design and programming and things like that.

Also, I believe that in the cases where the Elementary Desktop does follow its own path, it suffers from the same problem as Unity: it diverges from the rest of its own desktop environment, which is build upon GNOME too.

GNOME Shell is available from the repositories of Ubuntu Oneiric (upcoming 11.10, currently still in alpha), that does seem to work correctly.

I think that it would indeed be a very hard decision to decide at this stage to drop Unity, not only because it would mean that a lot of good work with great quality would be lost, but also because of the distrust that Unity and the Banshee-Ubunty One Music Store affair seeded and of course the loss of face.

Then you'd have the same problems, only a different desktop philosophy to diverge from.

1. This hasn't got anything to do with GTK+ 3, because that technology is so flexible, it does not enforce a specific desktop story.
2. Those interfaces do represent a certain desktop story, one that is different from the philosophy behind Unity. Therefore, it won't fit in as well.
3. My personal preferences indeed favour GNOME Shell's notification area and system over Notify OSD, but personal preferences are not relevant. The quality of Unity itself isn't even relevant. What I want to say is that Canonical's own desktop will inevitably diverge further and further from GNOME, but since Canonical cannot properly develop and maintain all elements of a desktop, it will lead to inconsistency on the desktop. That, indeed, is bad.
4. You are free to do so, but that does not change that it is a different view of the desktop than GNOME Shell or GNOME Do and Docky.