Logo Contest

[Bob Martin]

I assisted a private university with the conversion from MS to Debian 
year before last. Their IT department wanted FreeBSD, but the regents 
said no. They understood the value of FreeBSD, but figured (correctly) 
that Linux would work as well, and there wasn't any chance of being sued 
over the logo.

They donated $50,000.00 US to the GNU foundation this year, as a way to 
express their happiness with open source software. (It was a meager sum, 
compared to what they used to tithe Redmond)

By your standards, they got what they deserved. So did the GNU. Being 
inflexible on this sort of thing will do nothing for FreeBSD, but it 
clearly can do harm.

I'm as attached to our mascot as anyone. Beastie adorns my favorite 
coffee cup, my "best" tee-shirt and hangs from the mirror in my car. But 
I love the OS beastie represents even more.

Bob Martin

-- Has anyone else considered the irony of debating the political 
correctness of something that originated at UC Berkeley?

Peter Kieser wrote:
> When the Project decides that political correctness is more important 
> than a tradition dating back over 20 years, something is wrong.
> 
> Personally I really don't care if a user selects another OS based on the 
> fact that we have a devil as our mascot. They are better off on another 
> OS anyways, because they're likely to cause problems -- because people 
> with that kind of attitude are likely to bring up other "issues" with 
> our "product".
> 
> --Peter
> 
> Alexandr Kovalenko wrote:
> 
>> Hello, Robert Watson!
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 09:13:39PM +0000, you wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>>> I'd like to voice my support for the logo competition.
>>>> I was particularly pleased to read a comment on Daemon News that 
>>>> Beastie
>>>> would remain the mascot and that the logo and mascot are being
>>>> separated.  I am hopeful that this comment was accurate.
>>>> ...now, if I could only draw......     
>>>
>>> The comment is accurate.  We'd like to get a logo we can provide to
>>> companies that are willing to stick it on their products as "supporting
>>> FreeBSD" -- while we all love the Daemon, we know that not every company
>>> can stick it on their Ethernet card box or server support web page.  The
>>> intent is to keep Beastie as the Mascot, and you'll still see him all 
>>> over
>>> the place.  I can't imagine that FreeBSD t-shirts will stop holding him,
>>> let alone the large number of web pages, CDROM distributions, and so on.
>>> And don't forget the stuffed animal Beasties :-).
>>>   
>>
>>
>> But I've already seen some products which represented Beastie as
>> "Designed for FreeBSD" (actually they mean "Designed to be supported by
>> FreeBSD" :).
>>
>> Heh, anyway, political correctness is a$$pain for me...
>>
>>  
>>
>>> For entertainment value, I should scan in the anonymous letter I 
>>> received
>>> from someone in Kansas a few years ago.  It compared the Beastie to 
>>> using
>>> Osama Bin Laden as the FreeBSD logo, and was CC'd to my company and
>>> research sponsors. It's a classic :-).  Of course, it wasn't appreciated
>>> at work because this was a bit after the anthrax scare, and anonymous
>>> mailed envelopes weren't real popular.   
>>
>>
>> :))
>>
>>  
>>
> 
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