Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:17:13 -0500 From: Garance A Drosehn <gad@FreeBSD.org> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: RE: Please don't change Beastie to another crap logo such as NetBSD!!! Message-ID: <p0620070bbe317e5b5746@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNKEFGFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> References: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNKEFGFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
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At 12:50 AM -0800 2/10/05, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>No, sorry. The core team apparently feels that the way to do things
>now is to made decisions of this nature first, then have discussion
>later, rather than the reverse which previously has been the case.
This contest came out because the developers who actually work on
freebsd had a very energetic debate on the topic. Core stepped in
before we started throwing pies at each other, and came up with
this idea: *Keep* Beastie as the official mascot, but then have a
**** ----> PUBLIC CONTEST <---- ****
open to **** ----> EVERYONE <---- ****
to see if we might also come up with some alternate logo.
>However, as the core team as apparently represented by R Watson
>has stated they want to consider this internally first, then
>just tell the userbase what they are going to do later on, I
>say screw you, and I'll argue and fight against this topic for
>years.
How silly. "Internally" means "among all the committers who spend
their time, effort, and money making commits to the FreeBSD project".
It does not mean "Robert Watson talked to his navel, and they agreed
on this course of action".
The actual developers. The people you pretend to respect, unless
anyone one of them has a single idea which might disagree with you.
While you seem determined to pretend that Robert Watson is somehow
the sole person interested in this, let me note I am one of the
FreeBSD committers who would like to see some new ideas for a logo.
Now if nothing particularly special comes from this contest, then
fine, at least we *tried*. But apparently you think we're not even
supposed to try.
Why would I like some other logo? Because in addition to committing
the occasional patch to FreeBSD (totalling some 500+ commits), I do
public presentations to groups of non-FreeBSD'ers about FreeBSD. I
am trying to promote FreeBSD -- THE OPERATING SYSTEM -- and I am
tired of spending my time explaining some cartoon character. I am
in this project because of the quality of the operating system, and
NOT because I have some deranged need to defend some "in joke" about
daemons.
As I said on the committers mailing list when we were debating this
topic: The beastie icon does *not* separate "close-minded" people
from "open-minded" people. It does *not* separate the "religious"
people from "non-religious" people. It does not even separate
"Christian" people from "non-Christian" people. The only thing
that logo does is separate "People who already know Unix" from
"People who have never heard of a daemon process". It is nothing
more than an "in joke", where we can feel smug about how "smart"
we are when some poor goober is stupid enough to ask "So why do
you use some cute-looking demon for your icon?".
When I have done public presentations for FreeBSD, I have never had
anyone reject FreeBSD because of the deamon. Not once. And if I
am talking to a group of Unix-people, I don't even have to explain
the beastie icon.
On the other hand, I do sometimes get people who have no experience
with Unix. And those people will look at me like I am still some
kid trying to defend the Major Matt Mason as being an "action figure"
instead of a doll. Their attitude is "Okay -- so unix has these
things called a 'daemon process' -- but I still don't get why is it
so important that your icon must be this cartoon". They would have
the exact same attitude if we happened to call those processes 'a buzz
process', and then made our icon be Buzz Lightyear. The "religious
connotation" is not relevant, because most the people I talk to are
simply not all that religious. And yet they still look at me like
I am nuts when I am explaining the logo, and I see no reason I should
continue to waste my time giving people a lesson in the history of
the word 'daemon'. I am a programmer, not a teacher of linguistics
or word-history.
--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer or gad@FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY; USA
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