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New FreeBSD Logo Contest to Close on June 30
xbsd writes "The Official FreeBSD Logo Contest is closing on June 30, 2005. As of June 23 they have received 429 compliant submissions, but if you got the skills you still have a few hours left to submit a proposal. Now, is it time for F/OSS projects to follow NetBSD and get a more polished (or as some would say, 'corporate') public image?"
If you go to the linked site, they say that Beastie will continue to be the project's mascot, but they simply don't have a logo. If they put Beastie on something, someone either knows what the product is, or they don't. What they need seems to be something more like the "Slashdot" graphic in the top left of every page here on Slashdot. No-one said the logo can't include Beastie.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Beastie is NOT going anywhere.
This is simply a logo for things like letterhead, marketing, conveying a "professional" corporate image, etc.
What's the first thing that pops into your head when you look at this logo?
What about this one?
And this one?
This too?
Anyways.......
There are times when you want to present yourself with a logo, not with an image of the mascot. That's how I understood it, and to me it makes a lot of sense.
--
Requiem for the FUD
Here are a few reasons why we need a logo...
1. Beastie is generic, it's associated with all of the BSDs and not specific to FreeBSD.
2. We don't have a logo. Beastie is not, and never was, the logo for FreeBSD.
3. Copyright and Trademark issues, Marshall McKusick holds all rights to him.
4. Beastie is too complex, economically, for print media.
Let me say again... Beastie is NOT being booted from FreeBSD and no, we did not cave into the demands of right-wing religious people. This is all about branding, marketing, and PR. And you could use the mozilla project as a case study of some of the positive side effects this could have for us.
FreeBSD, being rather generic in focus, is a tougher one to design for. Maybe the guy who owns the beastie copyright will transfer it to FreeBSD (or grant unlimited license, etc.) and beastie will become official.
He's a cool guy actually. He's written books, papers and BSD code and most recently on a book on FreeBSD, so who knows. I don't know if FreeBSD would want exclusive rights to Beastie though. Since Beastie has such a general BSD history, FreeBSD would probably still want an image for their own identity.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I guess they're oversensitive because of the Copyright and Trademark issuse surrounding the daemon/Beastie image (which are pwn3d by Marshall McKusick).
... facts are facts. ;)
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
I am not sure if you are talking about the same product, but a Australian Outfit by the name of Silicon Breeze Pty Limited used to produce FreeBSD, Linux or Other open source jewellery. Including Beastie, Tux and Apache Quill/Feather statues out of quite a number of metals and alloys including Gold.
u xjewellery.com/beastie/
However they seem to have gone out of Business.
Their web address used to be:
http://www.siliconbreeze.com/ it doesn't exists anymore.
Here is Internet Archive link to the old site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040209165643/www.lin
OR
http://tinyurl.com/892st
For what its worth here is the postal address:
Silicon Breeze Pty Limited
49 Yarrabung Rd
St Ives NSW 2075
Australia
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with the Silicon Breeze company.
~AC