Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 16:08:58 +0100 From: "Jeff Rollin" <jeff.rollin@gmail.com> To: "Beech Rintoul" <beech@alaskaparadise.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New FreeBSD Logo Message-ID: <8a0028260605100808i42649810n5864832886298763@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <8a0028260605100737t52670e55yea6b3ddccb7112b5@mail.gmail.com> References: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNOEONFDAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> <200605100208.38485.beech@alaskaparadise.com> <8a0028260605100737t52670e55yea6b3ddccb7112b5@mail.gmail.com>
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I'm going to put my 2 cents (or at the current conversion rate, 1 (British) penny!) in here, I think. I consider myself a new FreeBSD user. I have used it before (around 4.8), but never really did much with it. I find that I don't very often dual boot OSes, so I've had nothing but Gentoo on my desktop till now. I finally decided to put FreeBSD 6.0 on my laptop, alongside SuSE, and give it a try. I don't expect to have a "vote" on whether the FreeBSD logo is any good or not. But I can still express an opinion. I'm here to tell you that Beastie has recognition from outside the communit= y as well. That's what logos are for. We in the BSD community, new members as well as old, know who we are. As I said, I did not vote on the new logo business, but if I did, I would have said no. Why didn't I? Well it wasn't because I agreed with it, or because I didn't know about it. I simply didn't consider that I had a right to vote, given that at the time I wasn't even using FreeBSD. People can, and do, use the FreeBSD logo to spread awareness of the OS. That is a good thing. I take th= e view FreeBSD is intimately connected with Beastie. If the "corporate" and "religious fundie" arguments hold water, then why is Beastie still the FreeBSD mascot? I disagreed because, apart from not seeing the point of pandering to a few religious fundies (and those among you who object to such a characterisatio= n should know that I consider myself pretty religious, too, just not a fundie), as I said, Beastie has brand recognition. Sometimes, it's true, yo= u just HAVE to bite the bullet and get a new brand, but there's no point doin= g it unless its absolutely necessary. I can't remember the last time I saw a different version of the IBM logo except on sites about IBM history. Why? Because people recognize it. It has the advantage of not being too closely identified with a particular era, of course, but so does Beastie. For another example of the same, I believe SONY will suffice. For a few years I've had THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 4.4BSD O.S. I= t has Beastie on the cover. I'd be more concerned about looking like a geek i= n synagogue if someone caught me there with it, than a Satanist. I think I'm justified in saying that Linux distributions are more widely accepted than probably all the BSD's put together, certainly in terms of brand recognition amongst the wider public. Having a penguin as the logo doesn't seem to have hurt, even when you consider that (for whatever reason), the root of Linus's fondness for penguins comes from being bitten by one. When ST:TOS came out, the production co. wanted to drop Spock because they thought his appearance was too "devilish", despite the fact that in the first (pilot) episode, he *even smiled*. Needless to say, Roddenberry (sp?) stuck to his guns and today Spock is one of the best-loved ST characters, known even outside the Star Trek fan community. I'm sure a few religious fundies still probably object to him (have they found a passage in Leviticu= s implying "God hates aliens/logic" yet?). My question to you is this: Who amongst the fanbase, the wider public, or a= t Paramount gives a damn? Turned into more like my 2 pounds, but there we go. Yours, Jeff.
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