Re: New Logo

From: Alex Zbyslaw (xfb52_at_dial.pipex.com)
Date: 11/03/05

  • Next message: paul thodiyil: "Re: Installing wine on 6.0 RC" 
    Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:29:14 +0000
To: Free BSD Questions list <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>

    Peter Clutton wrote:

    >>Ted wrote:
    >>
    >>Your opinion, they probably wouldn't agree. If you decide Beastie isn't
    >>important enough to bother defending, that's your choice. Of course I
    >>will note that you had no problem getting the attention for your books
    >>by using Beastie images on their covers.
    >>
    >>
    >[...]
    >
    >And if you're referring using the beastie on his book The Complete
    >FreeBSD, I hardly think it was responsible for it's success. Might
    >have something to do with being one of the best books on FreeBSD
    >sysadmin out there at the moment. Can't comment on his other books,
    >haven't read them.
    >
    >
    Indeed, I expect the book was successful because it got good
    word-of-mouth reviews, though I also expect that anyone still buying
    things from a bookshop would have instantly recognised it as a FreeBSD
    book thanks precisely to Beastie on the cover. If Beastie is on the
    spine as well, then it makes it easy to pick out from your bookshelf.

    And this is precisely the point. The book was being judged by the
    quality of what was inside it, not by the Beastie on the outside of it -
    which just made it easy to recognise. Surely the same is supposed to be
    true of FreeBSD? The logo, or mascot or whatever the heck you want to
    call it is for brand recognition; but FreeBSD should be judged by what
    it does and how well it does it. For historical reasons, FreeBSD is
    recognised by Beastie.

    And to whoever was complaining that all this argument in questions
    looked divisive and should stop: the whole logo contest couldn't have
    been better devised to foment division. The whole process was carried
    out behind closed door and apparently instigated by someone with a
    specific anti-Beastie agenda. The whole thing *could* have been handled
    differently, but for whatever reasons (none of which can be laudable) it
    wasn't. The submissions could have been freely viewable; there could
    have been a mailing list devoted to discussion; and for those of us who
    find the whole logo/mascot distinction to be risible, Beastie could have
    been a possible winner. None of these things happened. FreeBSD may not
    (for good reasons) be a democracy, but neither, in most cases, is it a
    tyranny. We can discuss the future development on mailing lists;
    numerous developers reply endlessly to to questions, comments and
    problems; development happens by (mostly) reasoned discussion and not by
    diktat. The logo contest stands in stark contrast to that.

    Whatever the merits or demerits of the "final" "logo" (and I do quite
    like the font), the contest itself stands as a shining example of how to
    piss people off.

    --Alex

    _______________________________________________
    freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
    http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
    To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"

  • Next message: paul thodiyil: "Re: Installing wine on 6.0 RC"