FreeBSD Torrent Server

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Oliver Fromme" <olli at lurza.secnetix.de>
To: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>; <tedm at toybox.placo.com>;
<gldisater at gmail.com>; <hildebeb at mts.net>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 3:50 AM
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Torrent Server


> Sorry for the late reply, but I think this one needs a
> correction, so others don't find wrong information in
> the archives ...
>
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>  > [...]
>  > The FreeBSD Beastie was struck from his position as logo for FreeBSD
>  > for some EXTREMELY minor controversy surrounding religions icons.
>  > Well, using  a Devil image didn't pirate anyone software or break a
law.
>  > Yet Beastie was axed for exactly the same "guilt by association"
reasons.
>
> I'm afraid that paragraph is completely wrong.  The BSD
> daemon (sometimes called "Beastie", but that's not its
> official name) was not "struck from his position as a
> logo", and it was not "axed".
>
> The BSD daemon never was a logo of the FreeBSD project.
> It was rather a mascot (and it still is!).

Not this again.

Before the "devil" controversy flared up, there was no usage of
"mascot" in relation to Beastie.

The term "mascot" began to be used by the anti-Beastie people
as a way of appeasement of the pro-Beastie people.

> However, it
> was sometimes used in a context where a logo would be
> used normally, simply for the fact that FreeBSD didn't
> have a real logo.
>

It was always used in a context where a logo would be used
normally simply for the fact that it WAS the FreeBSD logo.

The many years of Walnut Creek selling FreeBSD cd's
firmly established Beastie as the logo.

> Now, after the result of the logo contest last year,
> FreeBSD has a real, official logo, in addition to the
> BSD daemon mascot.

There is no law or requirement that says that anyone cannot still
continue to use the Beastie image as a logo if they want.  What we
got from the contest is simply a second image that can be used as
a logo.

Nobody is arguing that Beastie was the best logo image that could
of been used.  This is something that the anti-Beastie people have
never understood.  One of it's drawbacks is that the image is
copyrighted by McKusick and permission must be sought by him
when using it.  Another is that it does not reporduce well at all as
a thumbnail.  A third is that so many different forms of Beastie
have been drawn that it has diluted the it's value as a logo.  And last
and most importantly, it has religious connotations that can cause trouble
for it being used as an image with certain groups.

If the anti-Beastie people had approached Beastie with reverence
and brought up these issues there would never have been a
controversy.  However the fact was that the anti-Beastie people
were so hell-bent on getting a new logo design that they took
the tack that "oh we aren't going to replace Beastie" to try to
pacify the pro-Beastie people.  It didn't work, people saw through
it.  That is why the logo contest dragged on easily 6 months longer
than the organizers originally hoped.  It is also why the logo
contest was not a public one - nobody but the contest organizers
saw all of the submissions, the userbase was no given any kind of
voting choice.  The entire issue was dynamite and caused an uproar
whenever it was brought up in any online discussion.

The very fact that you feel compelled even now, a year after your site
has successfully bulldozed the new FreeBSD sex-toy logo design through,
to still try to rewrite history shows the emotion that is
still there in the controversy.

>  Just look at www.freebsd.org.
> It doesn't look axed to me.  ;-)
>

If the pro-Beastie people had rolled over without complaining then
Beastie would not be on the website anymore.  What happened is that
in order to calm the controversy, the website designers continued to use
Beastie on the website.  For now, that is.  But there is a long term
plan to gradually convince the userbase that Beastie is obsolete, and
one of the techniques is rewriting history on the public forums, like
you are attempting to do here with your post.

This discussion is exactly the same issue as why the US Department of
Defense still does not allow the Pentagram (wiccan symbol) to be drawn
on military tombstones.  They allow every other major religious symbol
including the stupid "universal swirl" that some Athiests use.

Ted