[advocacy-discuss] Logo colours ...

[Ceri Davies]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 10:18:58AM +0000, Simon Phipps wrote:
> 
> On Mar 18, 2008, at 23:40, Christopher Frost wrote:
> > 	I would like to suggest the proposal for a Logo contest, or a  
> > competition. I
> > think it would give a lot of people the chance to express their  
> > feelings
> > about OpenSolaris.
> 
> While that would be a fun thing to do, I think it would be a mistake  
> right now. Here's why.
> 
> First, the build team for the May release needs some graphics to  
> include in their release. Realistically, they need them in the next  
> week or so. Since we're on a "release train" model, the train isn't  
> going to wait for us to hold a competition, so in practice introducing  
> this delay means asking for a decision to be made without our  
> involvement and invites another confrontation. This is just a  
> pragmatic observation, not a defence of the situation.

While that's probably true, allowing them to choose the new OpenSolaris
logo based on time pressure without doing at least one of:

  a) defining the logo as just meaning "Indiana";
  b) defining re-use terms for distros;
  c) defining some kind of ownership of the logo for the community at
       large;
  d) going to ballot;

is going to cause nothing but more outcry that Sun is guilty of forcing
unilateral decisions on the project as a whole once again.  Note that
I'm not saying that I necessarily support that view, merely that the
argument will get opened up again with no doubt.

> Second, designing graphics for this sort of use is actually a skilled  
> task. It involves an awareness of international branding guidelines,  
> of the legal implications of the choices, and of more. Each design  
> then needs to have a legal search carried out on it, and more. We  
> wouldn't ask for the thread scheduler to be designed by a contest;  
> we'd expect it to be a task for the skill of a clever and experienced  
> community contributor. The same should apply to this work.

Of course this is true.  When the FreeBSD Project ran our logo
competition (http://logo-contest.freebsd.org/result/) some three
years ago or so, we received approximately 300 contributions, as I
recall.  The initial cut was to ask interested committers to run
through them and do the first cut-down, then everyone else got to
vote on the remainder.  Each voter was made aware of basics such as the
ability to easily screen-print such logos, and in some cases the
submitter of a logo was asked to submit examples in grayscale and so on
to clarify how the logo would look.

In the end, I think we ended up with a great logo.

> Fun though this idea would be, I believe it invites the actual  
> decision to just be made anyway and I don't think we want to make that  
> happen. I think we need to engage with the designs we have, make  
> constructive comments and suggestions and make sure that the design  
> chosen is the best we can make it in the time available.

I strongly disagree with this; I think it's an oversight on Sun's part
for the decision to suddenly have to be made in such a short time, and
we (as the OpenSolaris project at large) would be better served if the
May release were to use the current logo and change later; all of
NetBSD, FreeBSD and SpamAssassin (as others have pointed out) have
survived a "late" logo change with no harm done.  I believe the risk to
the project from potentially upsetting members again outweighs the risk
of changing the logo at a later stage.

Ceri
-- 
That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all.
                                                  -- Moliere
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