Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

I think I'm gonna get beaten but this make perfectly sense for me. Using community input for design (like in "I want to make this pretty and usefull what do you tink ?") is a bad idea. We all have a sense of beauty and usefulness that's shaped by our tastes, use-cases and work-flows. "Design by comity" is an absolute evil when it comes to get to a sleek product.

Still, I fear the the line between design and implementation may be a bit blurry when it comes to desktop shell. I just hope they will seek input from the community soon enough...

Also what I understood from the "ta-da" announcement is that it was in fact the move from a process where features were designed and implemented behind the Canonical curtains to a process where well-know community member could take an active role in the development of such feature at a much more early stage, even if that means to not publicly communicate before the implementation testing step. I would summarize that as an opening, even if still not in what most people would call the open source spirit.

But I'm may be mistaken.