[advocacy-discuss] Re: [ogb-discuss] Re: [osol-discuss] Logo/Mascot for OpenSolaris

[Jim Grisanzio]

Donal McMullan wrote:
> Darren.Reed at Sun.COM wrote:
>  > I don't have any suggestions on who the illustrators should be,
>  > I just recognise that it isn't likely anyone inside a community that
>  > is predominately made up of those engaged in the development
>  > of opensolaris is likely to be as capable in this area.
> 
> The Pentium 4 exemplifies the technology you get when the marketing 
> department does the engineering.[1] If we're allowed to come up with a 
> symbol to represent OpenSolaris ourselves, it's likely to be the Pentium 
> 4 of mascots. I hope we're a little more ambitious than that. :)
> 
> Scott Adams puts it well:
> http://pag.csail.mit.edu/~adonovan/dilbert/show.php?day=14&month=12&year=2003 
> 
> 
> I don't want to stem the flow of ideas, but I'd also like to hear 
> people's voices on:

You are not stemming anything. These actually *are* the issues that need 
discussing way before any logo is created. So, cool. I brought up more:
http://opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=132674&tstart=0


> 1. How you think OpenSolaris is currently positioned?


Currently we are a source community. But there has always been a desire 
to grow to engage other types of developers and even general users /and/ 
to grow aggressively in emerging markets -- some of what are far from 
California and cross some big language and cultural barriers. So, we'll 
have to grow out of being just a source community, and we'll need new 
tools to offer people. We have a few excellent distros right now with 
another one on the way. I'd say that right now we are a high end, 
relatively small developer community that is growing into a mid-size 
community faster than we even realize. We've alway been a underdog, too. 
We are supposed to be dead by now, so this community has some guts and 
that needs to be expressed in this discussion as well. There are a lot 
of people here who stuck it out ...


> 2. Where you think it should and realistically could be positioned?

It seems the desire is to be very comprehensive -- everything from 
kernel engineers to general users. Messaging that and providing the 
right infrastructure will be challenging.



> 3. How do we get from 1 to 2?


Slowly. :) However, we should be aware that we are in this position now 
/because/ we've been so successful so far. So, we should at least 
continue what we've been doing but add to the mix some of the things 
that extend our young history. Most of what we are discussing now has 
been an extension of everything we have been discussing for three years. 
But, pieces fall into place in their due time. I just want to make sure 
we don't forget the history.


> 4. How can branding and messaging help to effect that shift?


Advertising. PR. Engineering. All are involved in community building. 
Much of it has been Sun led initially, but over the last year as the 
community has been taking form I can see areas where the community (the 
non-Sun community, I mean) will lead.


> So - we can approach this more as a problem to be solved than as a 
> beauty parade. How do we want to position Indiana/OpenSolaris, not just 
> among the open OSes, but also alongside OSX and Windows?


Indiana is tougher because there are some pretty big differences of 
opinion on how that will emerge as a product and it's message. It does 
need to to be a part of this conversation, though.


> Does OpenSolaris have a "cuddly-ness" deficit to make up? It's not 
> obvious to me that a cuddly mascot will help with positioning Indiana as 
> the de facto standard platform for developers[2].
>
> Is branding one of the things that the Linux or *BSD communities have 
> gotten resoundingly right, or we should be cautious about following 
> their lead?[3]


I've never thought that following Linux (or any other community) is 
wise. There's simply no reason to follow since that only narrows our 
perspective. I've always supported organic growth as the best option for 
OpenSolaris in the long run. In terms of branding, I don't think Linux 
or the BSDs have gotten it's resoundingly right. When I think if good 
branding I think if Apple and Sony and companies like that.


> Whose visual identity do you really admire? How does it express their 
> values? What are the values that we want to communicate to the 
> developers we think would benefit from OpenSolaris?
> 
> Thanks if you made it this far. I'm un-cross-posting this reply from OGB 
> discuss.


Cool. The OGB has no involvement in this issue whatsoever, so thanks for 
not cross-posting.

You've brought up some good issues ... I'll have to think about them 
more. :)



Jim
-- 
Jim Grisanzio http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris