Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 02:54:31 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Josh Ockert" <torstenvl@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Demon license? Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNKEAKFCAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <126eac480507190836313fe1d8@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Josh Ockert >Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 8:36 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >Subject: Re: Demon license? > > >No. I have no objection to your position. I have an objection to your >complete lack of disrespect. You are a troll. You go on and on, >misquoting, deliberately trying to confuse the issue, and just >generally adding nothing to the discussion. > I have added plenty to the discussion and others have said so. They may have pointed out that my delivery methods are caustic, and that you attract more flies with honey than vinegar, but they don't dispute that I have made an addition. You obviously object to the caustic delivery and so are going to choose to be blinded to the content within the delivery. So be it. >> Much like the current US President George Bush blocks his ears when >> people point out to him that he committed to fire whoever leaked >> a covert CIA operative's identity - then when it was discovered that >> his right-hand-man did it, he goes back on his word. > >Except that in that case people were pointing out facts. As you said >in your email, there has been no official vote. So you have no facts. >You are in effect contradicting yourself when you say that those in >favor of the new logo ARE in the extreme minority, but then say there >was never any tally of opinions. > The PRO Beastie faction is NOT attempting to change the status quo. The ANTI Beastie faction IS. I am sorry this is possibly unfamiliar to you, but the burden of proof to justify a change is on the group attempting to make a change. That means you, since you are apparently choosing to stand with the group wanting to make the change. I don't have to do a vote proving that you are a minority because by definition, since you are wanting to change the status quo, you ARE a minority. YOU are the one whos burden it is on to convince the majority that the status quo needs changing. So, let's hear your arguments. This is how reasonable people work. If your anti-Beastie arguments have merit, they will quickly be accepted by the majority - WITHOUT the need of a contest I might add - and the change will occur without significant objection. That hasn't happened here in this forum. > I >do however think it would be beneficial to have an image that is more >abstract and more suitable to corporate customers. Corporate backing >helps penetration into the market and it sometimes can result in >funding. Refer please to Linux and IBM. > OK, this is one of the first REAL arguments you have presented that isn't based on an avoidence technique. So, let's look at it. You say that the current image of Beastie isn't suitable to corporate customers. Do you have some sort of survey or proof that corporate customers automatically ignore products that have images of red devil-looking characters on them? (And no I don't mean ignoring products that have images of Satan on them, Greg) I won't dispute the fact that somewhere there is a corporate customer that isn't going to use FreeBSD because they think there's an image of Satan "on the cover" But I think it's absurd to claim that many corporate customers avoid FreeBSD because they think there's a "Devil on the cover" There's an enormous body of evidence that shows that large numbers of corporate customers currently use FreeBSD. They obviously don't have a problem with "an image of Satan on the cover" And you cannot please everyone. I would argue that somewhere there's a corporation that ignored use of Linux because they thought the image of a Penguin on the cover was too silly looking, and so obviously if the authors of Linux couldn't come up with a professional looking image on the cover, they didn't come up with a professional operating system. One of the risks you take if you replace Beastie with a different image, is that the new image is going to be misinterpreted by a different group of people. OK, so you put a cross on the cover - now all the religious right that ignored it because there was a Devil on the cover, they love you - then you lose all the Atheists that hate crosses. A crude example but you get the meaning I think. Nobody has yet come up with a commercial image that is NOT objectionable to some group out there. Look at AT&T - they spent millions of bucks coming up with their logo and ended up with this globe made up of lines, that I am sure their logo consultants figured was as non-objectionable as possible to everyone. Then, they start using it everywhere and some wag noted a resemblance to Star Wars, and labeled it the "AT&T Death Star" logo, and all that money and effort just went into the crapper. I'm sure that 6 months after the label "Death Star" logo made it's rounds, that the chief marketing person at AT&T probably said "That's the LAST GODDANM TIME we try to come up with a fucking politically correct logo" Your also inferring that if we change the logo away from Beastie, then there will be a massive market shift that will put FreeBSD on par with Linux. This is wishful thinking. There are historical reasons that Linux is where it's at and FreeBSD is where it's at in market share. It is far too late for a logo change to have any effect on this, even if the Beastie image was the reason 10 years ago that people went to Linux. (which it wasn't) The USL/UCB lawsuit happened at the critical turning point with Linux and FreeBSD. It is no different than why Microsoft is as big as it is today. Microsoft got big because they cheated Seattle Computers out of DOS at a critical time. Linux got big because the uncertainties of the USL/UCB lawsuit affected FreeBSD at a critical time. You can scream, cry, piss and moan about this all you want, but that is how life works and there is nothing that you can do about it. Booting out Beastie in exchange for an abstract image that might be more palatable to a tiny minority of corporate customers who would probably be more trouble than they are worth, isn't going to change the market share figures of FreeBSD vs Linux. >> This "mascot" argument has been brought up before and disproved >> before. Beastie has been treated as the Project's logo since >FreeBSD 1.1 >> He has been referred to as a mascot - irregularly - but his image has >> been used as the defacto logo image for FreeBSD. > >There is nothing to disprove. It's not a formal argument. It's a >statement. He will be the project's mascot. Period. There is nothing >more to discuss. I have never said he *wasn't* the logo. If you think >I said that, please reread my original post. > And it is exactly this sort of arbitrary decision that makes the userbase think the anti-Beastie camp is full of shit. And while YOU personally may not have said that Beastie WASN'T the current logo, the primary agitators of change have said this. >with it. One does not see Beastie for the first time and automatically >conclude "FreeBSD"! It is this goal that one hopes will be >accomplished with the new logo. > I disagree, but for the sake of discussion let's assume you are right for the moment in that the general public does not associate Beastie with FreeBSD. Now, if you think that instantly an association will happen by changing the logo design you really don't have much understanding of how marketing works. There are only two ways that an organization can make the general public have a strong association between a logo and a product: 1) Be absolutely consistent with the One True Logo for a long, long, LONG time, a period of DECADES or longer. When you see the Seal of the President of the United States you make an instant connection with that and the President of the US. Why? The US Government does not have any advertising program nor do they spend advertising dollars on promoting this logo. The reason why is that you see the Seal on every official statement, coorespondence, etc. that comes out of the President's office, and the Seal has not been changed significantly since the country was formed. 2) Spend a huge amount of money blanking every known advertising venue with the new logo in conjunction with your product, for a short time. (like a couple years) This is how most corporate logos are done. FreeBSD does not have the money for this, so I'm not going to waste further discussion on why this method works. Beastie, or daemon images like Beastie, have been associated with BSD for close to 30 years, and only NOW is the association becoming strong enough with the general public for people to start talking about how it might be affecting the Project. Your very arguments are inconsistent here: you claim that no one who sees Beastie thinks "FreeBSD" on one hand, yet you claim on the other that corporations aren't using FreeBSD because of Beastie? Why would that be happening unless some kind of connotation already exists in those corporations? Assuming this "new logo" is created and decided on, it's going to take another 30 years of patient work to get an association established in the minds of the general public with it, and to get rid of the current objectionable-to-you association with Beastie. And that will only happen if you have total-buy-in among the userbase. The way your group is going about this now, you won't get that buy-in. So the only other way would be to dump millions into an advertising campaign to do it. And that money doesen't exist for this purpose and even if it did, most of the core members would revolt if that sort of budget wasn't plowed into FreeBSD development. >The reasoning behind this judgment is that >there are many cases in which FreeBSD might have been used that it was >not because some PHB didn't like Beastie. Ah, I've heard this argument before too. So we are going to jettison Beastie and the 30 years of work done to establish it as the logo just because a PHB decided to not use it? Ah ha. This argument is nothing more than good-old FUD. You know what that is, Fear Doubt Uncertainty. Another name is mudslinging when it appears in the political realm. WHO are these PHB's. Every time that this argument is waved around, and people start asking for specific concrete examples, when you boil the examples that are submitted down, you find out that the Beastie image is probably not the real reason that PHB didn't use it. We have a world of corporations where it appears to be common for some of the largest to regularly lie and cheat and steal millions of dollars - why do you think all those Enron people are on trial - and yet your wanting us to believe that if Beastie gets between a corporate user who can make a buck by using FreeBSD, and that buck, that it's going to make an iota of difference? >around. In fact, if you search the mail archives you'll find people >trying to get rid of the Beastie boot menu because it got them into >trouble at work. > There is no question that the Beastie image on the boot menu has caused problems for some people. It is trivial to remove. I would argue that for those people who this causes problems for, who are too lame-brained to spend the time with a search engine to find out how to do this, that we don't WANT them using FreeBSD, because they are too incompetent to use it properly and will just give the product a bad name anyway. If a technical administrator chooses to go to work for some right-wing religious wacko that would object to Beastie, he already has had to deal with even more stupid things than erasing the Beastie boot logo. Such as screaming about sex-related spam. And this frankly is not our problem. If the user doesen't like the Beastie boot image, or his boss doesen't like it, then he can remove it. It isn't like Windows where they make it difficult to get at. There's no evidence that this boot image has been a problem for the majority of the userbase. > >> This is a cowards argument and not one that will generate any respect >> among the userbase. > >Except those that are tired of having to explain what a daemon is to >people who don't have any appreciation for the internal workings of >the system. > I am tired of having to explain what a computer virus is for the bazillonth time to a customer on the phone who's Windows system just got screwed up by one. Are you going to go to all those idiots and make the switch over to MacOS X? You might consider that the people who don't have any appreciation for the internal workings of the system, aren't going to be swayed by technical arguments of how much better it is than Linux or of Windows. It is purely wasted effort to cater to these types. Why do you think that it is fair for a minority to take Beastie away from the rest of us so that this minority can go amuse itself trying to beat their heads against a wall? > >You've obviously never been in charge of a large organization. The >whole point is appeasement. You're trying to make the least number of >people pissed off. > I suppose that is why Nike corporation, one of the largest athletic apparel companies, has come out solidly for the Oregon senate bill to put in Gay Marriages? Oops, I don't mean Gay Marriages, I mean the euphasim they use for gays effectively being legally married in everything but name, they call it a domestic parternership bill I think. Shall I post the list of conservative family groups out there that this has pissed off? I think if you open your eyes you will find large organizations quite often have no problem with IGNORING groups that seek appeasement. >> There can only be one recognizable >> imagery for The FreeBSD Project, just as for ANY product. > >Really? OpenBSD happens to use both a blowfish (Puffy) and a >Beastie-like daemon quite successfully. Please see >http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/~grafj/openbsd/old/openbsd.png and >http://www.monkey.org/openbsd-mobile/obsd.jpg. Please also see the >OpenBSD 3.7 logo available at http://openbsd.org/images/puffy37.gif >and shown on the front page at http://www.openbsd.org/ > There is NO Beastie-like daemon image on the index page of http://www.openbsd.org/ or as any component of http://openbsd.org/images/puffy37.gif OpenBSD has used Beastie in the past, but there is not a strong connotation with Beastie and OpenBSD. Further since OpenBSD is such a young operating system - it was after all a fork of NetBSD, which is the same age as FreeBSD - there's no strong connotation with the general public with anything at this point. And given the market share as compared to FreeBSD, there probably will never be. FreeBSD is the flagship BSD, that is why Apple used it as a base for MacOS X. When the general public thinks of BSD they think of us - if they think of anything. >> And the >> appeasement argument also totally ignores that it is the userbase's >> choice of what imagery they recognize as being associated with FreeBSD >> that is going to win. If the userbase turns it's back on the >"new logo" >> that this ill-advised contest comes up with, then your going to be >> stuck with Beastie continuing to be used and recognized as the 'real' >> logo. > >You keep using "userbase" as though it is equal to yourself. I suggest >you stop speaking for other people unless you know exactly what they >believe. I'm part of the userbase, so I find this really offensive. > I would find it offensive to think that you are speaking for me, so I don't. You should stop looking for things to get offended by, you will live a happier life. I and everyone else defending Beastie speak for the Pro-Beastie faction which are a majority of the userbase, you and yours speak for the Anti-Beastie minority. > >> The situation would be analogous to if one day Microsoft decided they >> wanted to stop using the Windows logo and the word "Windows" to refer >> to their product line. It wouldn't work because the Windows userbase >> would simply ignore any alternative attempt at a logo than the flying >> Window. > >That's funny. In XP they redid their old logo. It's now much >more stylized. > OK, so are you going to stylize Beastie? Give him a perm? The anti-Beastie crowd already has indicated in this forum that a simple redrawing or restyling of Beastie would not be an acceptable contest entry. >> >> >Furthermore, you and some of those sharing your viewpoints have tried >> >to paint those wishing for a different logo as in the extreme >> >minority. >> >> They are. > >Prove it. > To you? I can't do that since you are convinced the anti-Beastie people are the majority of the userbase. But I can to the rest of the readers by simply pointing out that every thread on this subject in -questions is in the mailing list archive, and you can see that most of the people posting are against replacing Beastie by simply reviewing those archives. > >I need to go. You can respond or not, but if you do, be respectful. >And calm. And logical. If you have to choose, just be logical. > I will be happy to meet logic with logic. Arguing that a contest that pays out $500 for the winning entry is tanamount to a vote by the userbase, as you did at first, is rediculous, and I will meet it with ridicule, as it deserves. Ted
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNKEAKFCAA.tedm>