Frederic Hornain escribió:
Dear *,
Well, I know that I am not often on the mailing list but can I permit
to give you my point of view ?
In addition, I have red this post quite quickly so excuse me in
advance if I missed some points.
So, at first sight I would be more in accordance with what Alex said.
I do not see any reason why we would need a mascot even if there is a
lot of good reasons to create one and that the community want to
create one - I respect that -.
Ok, Linux has TUX and BSD has Chuck but have they others kind of logo ???
I have already difficulties to explain to people what Fedora is since
the split with Red Hat Enterprise Distribution.
How many time did I hear people asking what is the difference between
Red Hat and Fedora or again Fedo.. what?
So if in addition I have to explain that Fedora has one logo and one
mascot....
Well, I do not believe that my next event will be easy. You see what I
mean. :)
You know what ? Keep it simple as much as possible. That is my advice.
Nonetheless I have to admit a nice mascot could be useful for children
but at the opposite it would have - I think - a not so good effect on
companies and professional world.
How many times in the past do you hear that Linux was a toy for
students ???
OK, it is not the case anymore now. Fortunately !
Probably due to its logo representation and obviously a lack of
knowledge from professionals about what this OS could do.
Even if I have others argument I have to conclude - sorry for that but
I do not have lot of time -.
So for me, I think Fedora should keep its logo and should not
have another logo or mascot.
However it could be interesting to give one mascot to the
Children designed Fedora distribution.
I mean Sugar the OLPC OS.
Let's hope that you understand me, I was not so direct and I did not
hurt someone cause I respect what have been done here.
Thanks for your comprehension.
BR
Fred
I really do understand many of the detractors of the mascot idea.
however there's one little tiny bit that I believe is missing: Fedora
being the community project it is, and due to the issue with "parent
company" Red Hat which has for all purposes depleted of meaning the word
"Fedora" (which originally meant a kind of hat, specifically the "Red
Hat" hat, had to find a "new meaning", hence the quest for the Logo.
However the Logo is so heavily protected that it is pretty much useless
for any "fan art"... and last I heard Fedora wasn't meant for
corporations to adopt, nor is it intended for production machines
(desktops or servers) despite of its capabilities. Is Fedora capable of
being a good corporate desktop machine? Is Fedora capable of being an
excellent workstation (for media content creation, development, etc)? Is
Fedora capable of being a good and stable server? To all the previous
questions the answer is "YES", but "Was it intended to be used as such
in a production environment?" To that question, and take however you
like, the answer is "NO".
So, Fedora is still a community project, but the community is limited on
what we can do with the Logo and there's only so much you can do with
it, anyway... Hence the "need" for a mascot. Just like the Logo is a
graphic representation of the *Fedora* "Concept" (remember the word has
been depleted of its original meaning), which is rigid in nature and is
jealously protected (as it means brand and product association), a
"mascot" is a "friendlier" and if you will "freer" (now that would be a
pun for the "meaning" of the Logo) graphic representation of the
"values", "characteristics", "features", etc of a product/brand, in this
case, Fedora. And since we'll never be able to use the real meaning of
the word ever again (i.e. a hat) for "official" project's graphics, and
the current use guidelines of the Logo are so restrictive, and because
people *do* want to be able to manipulate and pour some of each artist'
personality into it, a mascot is indeed "needed". Fedora is not a
corporate OS, it may be the foundation of one (like RHEL), but it is
*not* intended to be one by itself. It can morph into great many things,
but its main purpose remains to be a cutting edge community project.
So when people asks "What is Fedora [Linux]?" despite of the mascot or
the Logo or the lack thereof of any of those... You can only say "It is
a community cutting edge GNU/Linux project"... I don't think that's too
hard to grasp, unless you need to go explaining "What a community
GNU/Linux project" is.
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