Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Wed 9th Feb 2005 12:42 UTC, submitted by n0dez
Unfortunately, the cute FreeBSD daemon is sometimes treated with misunderstanding in the religious and cultural
context. That's why The FreeBSD Project is announcing a public competition for the new logo design. You can find the rules of the competition in this document. Update: There is now a petition to keep Beastie, however FreeBSD's own Robert Watson emailed us to inform us that they are "seeking a new logo, but not a new mascot", so that petition is really reduntant. Update 2: Rob Watson writes:
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What I'd like to know is not whether the logo bothers some people, but whether this actually has any big impact on FreeBSD.
Does the FreeBSD project really face any substantial trouble owing to a cute demon logo? Are people orchestrating letter writing campaigns or withholding support over the cute demon logo? Are the developers' inboxen deluged with complaints? In short, is this an actual problem that needs to be solved?
Plenty of companies have logos and names that may offend a subset of religious people. Even some standard product names, like devilied ham, may "turn some people off." But these are not changed unless it actually affects the company.
I am biased because I was a BeOS user, and they had a perfectly good logo consisting of their name. Like IBM, Be has a nice, short name that works as a logo. But during the dot-com madness someone decided that the logo had to be changed to an abstract paperclip resembling either an eye or an ear.