This thread is to discuss the possible future development of ubuntu-unity . I will not set out a specific roadmap at the current time. I would like to share an article with the team in the form of questions asked of me and answers I had given that a writer of a popular online magazine had queried of me. I am not trying to steal any thunder here 
but I thought the team would like to know how I replied.
Hi, Mr Beaudoin (I assume that is your real name based on your Ubuntu Community username).
Iām writing an article about your Ubuntu Unity project for . Could you answer a few questions for me?
- Now that youāve got permission from Canonical to use the Ubuntu name, is there any doubt that Ubuntu Unity Remix will become a reality?
- How far are you from releasing your first official ISO?
- Where should people go if they want to help? What kind of skill set are you looking for?
- I havenāt used Unity much myself because I mainly use Solus. What is it that you like about Unity? Why create a new Ubuntu flavor?
- Will you be continuing development of Unity? Will you dump 8 because of the bugs and go to 9?
Looking forward to your reply.[/QUOTE]
Hi ,
Thank you for your inquiries. I will attempt to answer your questions as candidly as possible. You can personally refer to me as āDaleā and in your article you can refer to me as āDale Beaudoinā.
?1 I have already created some .ISOs for testing and the most recent http://people.ubuntu.com/~twocamels/archive/ is ready to download and test. We are looking forward to official flavor status. It is up to the Technical Board so we are still waiting for word but the people involved assure me that we are on our way.
?2 We have the meta-package in place and so now it is up to the Technical Board to decide. As I said previously there is an unofficial .ISO for testing at the above link I provided.
?3 Anybody is allowed to join the https://launchpad.net/~unity7maintainers team. Those that have launchpad skill sets and have signed the CoC and are Ubuntu Members will of course be asked to help out in maintenance and an advisory capacity but others are encouraged to join if they have concepts, ideas and artwork to share. It is mostly a community project and so we do not want to shut anyone out ā¦ even new_users who want to learn the process of testing a development cycle.
?4 Unity is unique in many ways. Mostly it is unique in assitive technologies. Of all the mixes and distros I have tested, unity uses the least amount of mouseclicks to navigate through the desktop. This is so awesome because it reduces RSI and persons who are prone to RSI can experience the effervescense of the unity desktop while getting real work done. It is also the most user_friendly DE that helps persons who are transitioning from Windows migrate to the linux based system which has always been a difficult stack to sell from a FOSS marketing perspective.
?5 Unity8 is a separate matter that our team will not be dealing with. That version has been forked as I understand it but we can learn a lot of things from that cycle. I had tested unity8 with vigor. Convergence is an awesome concept but for some reason the competition that mir created in the community disenfranchised a lot of developers. What I hope to do, or, what I suggest that my team do is take a new development approach and build a chalk-board sandboxing online campus similar to Microsoftās Building 87, the difference being that Unity 9 DE could perhaps give end_users a surface type experience with touch and gestures while enhancing the desktop experience with more integrated assitive technologies. One thing I can say is that I do not think it will be a slate or phone project at all. So , my hypothetical is that we can build a surface distribution and as surface devices become defunct with their current proprietary software, ubuntu can have something ready , maybe. The Ubuntu distros are known for making a hardware form factor with minimal resources become somewhat of a super-computer. Ubuntu, historically, has not based itās distributions on an abundance of hardware floss as surface projects currently do - so there are tools and facilities that are available to the FOSS community where we can do this unity 9 project in the future ā¦ perhaps during the next cycle.
Regardsā¦