Mascot - Blue Arrara

Máirín Duffy duffy at redhat.com
Mon Apr 9 18:51:08 UTC 2007


Alex Maier wrote:
>> Judging from how successful these mascots have been and
>> how often they've been used in so many events and places,
>> I'd say that our community (too) would get benefited from a mascot.
> 
> Just because others have them, doesn't mean we *need* one. What we
> need, is--as Máirín correctly noted--a community version of our logo,
> something anyone in the community can use and modify, for creation of
> wallpapers or promotional web pages, for example.
> 
> A parrot does not get us any closer to a sane logo licensing situation.

I think it would, if the parrot was recognized as a symbol of Fedora and 
community members could use it freely. You can't really trademark or 
copyright an animal or creature anyway. Logos are commonly trademarked 
and use particular fonts and have to look a particular way to be 
recognizable, but there are many many variations of Tux that are all 
recognizable and easily associated with Linux:

- http://streetpc.free.fr/img/Tux.png
- 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Baby.tux-800x800.png/600px-Baby.tux-800x800.png
- http://www.arabx.com.au/tux/

Obviously it would be nice if the Fedora logo could safely be released 
under a more open license but I certainly would *not* hold my breath 
waiting on copyright/trademark laws to be improved to a point where this 
is possible anytime soon. I know a number of very smart people are 
working on this but changes in this kind of policy take a long time.

>> If we do decide to go on with the mascot idea, the next logical step 
>> would be to
>> announce a contest for mascot ideas in public (something like the 
>> OpenVideo
>> contest [3]). I guess FAB should be notified before that.
>>
>>  [3]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OpenVideo
> 
> I ran this contest together with Max and Mike and a few others, and
> the intention never was to create something reusable for generations
> to come. The idea was to engage the creative community and to promote
> open licenses and open media encoding formats.
> 
> Design by committee is an oxymoron. Good taste has nothing to do with
> majority vote. Majority vote will reflect majority taste, but again,
> that's just me thinking out loud.

How exactly is this design by committee? It's several folksworking 
together as a team; folks proposing ideas if they are not designers, and 
designers coming up with artwork based on the proposals they liked. I 
don't think there is anything inherently bad about designers working in 
a team (quite the contrary.)

> /me goes to ponder why there is even a profession called "Designer" if
> we can vote.

I just don't understand this statement. I'm sorry. I don't see any 
esoteric 'voodoo' about design that makes it inherently a non-community 
activity (but I am truly sick of people saying it's so.)

I agree that design by committee is bad but I also do not think this is 
design by committee. This is a bunch of folks working together and 
experimenting.

~m




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