NetBSD Announces Logo Design Competition

jschauma writes "The NetBSD Project has announced that it has launched an international competition for the creation of a new logo. There is a cash prize of US $100.00 for the winning entry. The successful logo will also have wide exposure, featuring in all NetBSD material including, but not limited to; the NetBSD.org web site, software media, apparel, and business systems. The competition will close on February 29, 2004. The rules of the competition, submission information and the design brief can be found in the official announcement, which has already spawned some discussion on the netbsd-advocacy and current-users MailingLists." The announcement notes that the current logo is "too complicated... hard to reproduce... [and] has negative cultural, and religious ramifications."

Comments

Looks fine to me!

[CaptainAlbert]

> too complicated...

for whom? for what?

> hard to reproduce...

== hard to forge...

> [and] has negative cultural, and religious
> ramifications.

No, it doesn't. It's a cartoon devil. It doesn't offend anyone. Really. Unless you're one of those freaks who won't let their kids watch Scoobie-doo because it's got ghosts in it. Trust me. If it were hanging on a cross or wearing a turban, *then* maybe it'd need changing.

Sheesh!

Re:Looks fine to me!

[dave420]

It's a devil. Devils are evil. Cartoon or not, it's a symbol with evil connotations, which some people could feasibly find offensive.

For any sort of organisation to have a logo which could cause offense isn't a good start.

After all, with your logic, a swastika is just a bunch of lines... how could that offend anyone?

Re:Looks fine to me!

[KillerLoop]

*not* the BSD devil, check out the link given in the story.

Re:Looks fine to me!

[Ubi_NL]

No, it doesn't. It's a cartoon devil. It doesn't offend anyone. Really. Unless you're one of those freaks who won't let their kids watch Scoobie-doo because it's got ghosts in it. Trust me. If it were hanging on a cross or wearing a turban, *then* maybe it'd need changing.

It has nothing to do with the devils. It's a cartoon of a statue in which american soldiers are planting an american flag. That makes it culturally biased.

Although you have to be an idiot to be offended by it, loads of people (especially in some 'liberated' countries) are suchs type of idiots and there is no reason to get into this unnecessary type of trouble

Re:Looks fine to me!

[Ashtead]

The single cute "cartoon devil" (whose name may or may not be Chuck) that we see here on slashdot as the section logo for BSD, and which is really meant to be a visualization of a daemon, is not what's under consideration here. As a symbol for BSD, it is about as well-known and effective as Tux is for Linux.

However, these angry troll/devil hybrids in sneakers trampling over what appears to be a lot of desktop computer hardware however, is evidently what is found in need of an update.

I can list a few likely reasons for changing this, off the top of my head:

One thing is that devils is a somewhat religious device, not found in all religions.

Then there is the aesthetics of this. The logo is just kinda ugly. These guys are not all that different in appearance from some football hooligans... and after all, there is a strong element of marketing here, whether we like it or not. Would you want to buy an operating systems from these guys?

Political correctness or accusations of same, marketing and aestetics aside, I would say it is just as much that the design of the monitors is becoming dated, since many of us now have relatively skinny LCDs, not fat CRT-based ones. If nothing else, the logo is becoming tecnically dated.

All these could, individually, be considered warrants for change.

Re:Looks fine to me!

[EinarH]

Trust me, those religious nuts will have you arrested.

Yeah, but that is because they dropped out of school. If they had had any historic sence they probably would have recognized the original picture, and then it would have been okay for them.
(and let us not get into the discussion on wheter the picture is fake or not, that's offtopic)

Re:Looks fine to me!

[GypC]

The south is full of black people, and mostly we get along fine. Black people had a saying in the 60's, "Northerners love the black race, but can't stand black people. Southerners hate the black race, but get along with black people just fine."

Texas also has a lot of openly gay people. Haven't you ever heard the expression "steers and queers"? ;-) There is truth in it.

Another ignorant yankee...

It's not that they're devils ....

[binaryDigit]

Several people have posted (in the usual /. manner) that they don't see an issue with the devil, it's a cartoon, right wing religious wackos, etc. Well its not the devil, it's what the devils are doing. The devils are in a pose that mimics one that is usually associated with valour and the giving of ones life for "liberty" (whether or not you agree that this particular pose does or not is for another discussion). So now you have a logo that uses characters associated with negative deeds (the devil, cartoon or not) in the place of men associated with honor and self sacrafice. Given the current events, I could see how this logo, while passing under the radar for many years, is now suddenly considered inappropriate.

I can understand how many would find it inappropriate, which is unfortunate because for those who've been around the BSD and the computer scene for a while know exactly what the logo is trying to represent and it's quite accurate in that regard.

In contrast to the bashing

[Max Romantschuk]

I believe this is a good idea, from a branding standpoint.

The loss of the BSD daemon may be unfortunate, but looking at major brands it's pretty clear recognition doesn't require a cool mascot. To name a few: Nike, Adidas, Mercedez-Benz and Nokia all have rather simple comporate symbols.

If the NetBSD project wishes to look more professional in the eyes of marketeers, this is a good move.

An opportunity...

[pschmied]

...to raise awareness about one of the cooler OS projects out there shouldn't be wasted.

I know that the conventional wisdom is:

• FreeBSD is for servers
• OpenBSD is for firewalls
• NetBSD is for obscure hardware

But, in reality, NetBSD runs on so many platforms as a side effect of their stated policy to implement things the Right Way rather than ever relying on hacks.

NetBSD is one of the cleanest, most logical, and most innovative open source projects out there.

For example, NetBSD takes an insanely good idea (the FreeBSD ports collection) and makes it even better. Pkgsrc (NetBSD's answer to ports) is built in such a way that allows you to run it on Solaris, Linux, and a number of other operating systems. Plus it has a built-in package security auditing tool.

FreeBSD et al are moving toward NetBSD's innovative init system which in my mind combines the power of SysV and the ease of use of *BSD.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe NetBSD was the first OS anywhere to support ipv6.

NetBSD always seems to chug away in relative obscurity, with even BSD folk ignoring and misunderstanding it. Yeah, it's great for embedded work. Yeah, it'll run on almost anything. But it's also a really great workstation. And their uncompromising approach to quality and correct implementation make it a very stable and logical general purpose OS.

So, I for one welcome the new logo, and hope that it helps to bring NetBSD out of the shadows and allows my fellow open source users to enjoy another excellent operating system.

-Peter

Re:devil?

[Artifakt]

It's not just deeply religious people, or computer illiterate people, or people who leap quickly to stupid assumptions that make this logo a problem. First, the name isn't clear or catchy enough to be widely recognized, so the devil image becomes all most people have to go on. Imagine running across the person wearing a Duke Blue Devils sweatshirt, but the First word is "Forxgnarb", you've never heard the term before, there's no thing or place named that anywhere nearby, and when you ask what the blue devil stands for, the first things you hear are all about vaguely political issues, as seen by some small minority organization. How stupid is it really, to jump to the conclusion the sweatshirt wearer is in some cult?
NetBSD isn't going to get brand recognition from the word, just like Adidas didn't build brand recognition just on the word. It sounds too odd for that. Like Adidas, it's competing against words that have more relevance to the area (Microsoft sounded like computer stuff way back when it started, with words like software already paving the way for recognition - Nike is the greek goddess of victory, as most Olympic atheletes know).
If anything, the cuteness of the logo works against it more than an association with evil. It's a Warner Bros toon style devil. That's already saying "fine for home users, but would you trust a business to it?".