Re: Cultural Issue with the Foot Logo

[Sergey Panov <sipan sipan org>]

Hello Theppitak,

you raised an interesting question. There a few precedents, but I doubt
those cases validate the solution you propose:
  The first precedent that comes to mind is the reason the cheap sedan
from USSR was named "Lada"(archaic Slavic for "beautiful girl") instead
of the original "Zhiguli"(mountains in the area the car factory was
build by Fiat) because it was phonetically too close to "Gigolo".
  Another one is the "Firefox" in fox hating counties. This one is more
ridiculous then the previous one -- "firefox" is not a fox, but a red
Panda(unrelated to the entire dog family to which the real fox belongs).

I've mentioned those two examples in the wain attempt to prove that some
(many/most) of the "cultural" sensitivities are ridiculous to the point
of being foony.

When I saw "foot"(long, long time ago) as a "Gnome Desktop" emblem I was
not happy. I thought that the stinkiest part of the human body did not
deserve to be an emblem of the one of the most important GNU projects.
It had nothing to do with the cultural(Russian) background, it was my
personal reaction. I am  still a Gnome "bigot" and that "Foot" does not
bother me much anymore (all emblems are stupid). I even find it kinda
cool now - rebellious, in-your-face sort of thing.   

Please, please think twice, trice, ... before claiming cultural
differences/problems. Please check if it is just you.

PS. To me, the good example of culturally insensitive emblem would be
the old indo-europen symbol for the raising sun ("kolovrat" in Slavic).
The next in line is the sickle-and-hammer variant.

> >  while modifying the core and redistributing it
> > means that their modifications must also be distributed;
> > I'm comfortable with that, and I also wouldn't mind if the project
> > received a little more attention (since the current license bars
> > the glade core from use in any commercial IDE),
> > I love seeing it in Anjuta, I would love to see it all over the place :)
> 
> Anjuta IDE is GPL and would be disadvantaged by proposed re-licensing.
> 
> > In a utopic situation, glade being available in bleeding edge IDEs
> > could even help draw attention to Gtk+ and GNOME.
> > 
> > It also wasnt exactly clearly stated that glade isn't
> > just a static application but mainly a core library
> > with plugins.
> > 
> > Btw Im something of a fan of your work and admittedly
> > a little flattered to receive your mail Richard :D
> > 
> > Cheers,
> >               -Tristan
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-list mailing list
> > foundation-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
> 
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-list mailing list
> foundation-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-listGnome"; 

> >  while modifying the core and redistributing it
> > means that their modifications must also be distributed;
> > I'm comfortable with that, and I also wouldn't mind if the project
> > received a little more attention (since the current license bars
> > the glade core from use in any commercial IDE),
> > I love seeing it in Anjuta, I would love to see it all over the place :)
> 
> Anjuta IDE is GPL and would be disadvantaged by proposed re-licensing.
> 
> > In a utopic situation, glade being available in bleeding edge IDEs
> > could even help draw attention to Gtk+ and GNOME.
> > 
> > It also wasnt exactly clearly stated that glade isn't
> > just a static application but mainly a core library
> > with plugins.
> > 
> > Btw Im something of a fan of your work and admittedly
> > a little flattered to receive your mail Richard :D
> > 
> > Cheers,
> >               -Tristan
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-list mailing list
> > foundation-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
> 
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-list mailing list
> foundation-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-listLada"; 

On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 13:27 +0700, Theppitak Karoonboonyanan wrote:
> Dear gnome-i18n,
> 
> I believe this is an appropriate place to discuss about cultural
> conventions.
> 
> How is a foot interpreted in your culture? Do you have the same
> issue I have met? In my culture, showing foot is considered rude.
> And the foot is not something to impress people who are totally new
> to GNOME.
> 
> I am not asking to replace the foot logo. I just wish to have a secondary
> one which can also represent GNOME in my culture. But to convince
> people for the proposal, the effect of this issue may need some
> estimation.
> 
> Note that icon theming also helps at some degree to avoid showing the
> foot. But when talking about something outside the UI, such as
> screenshots in documentations, web site logos, and any other kinds
> of promotions, we need more consistency. That is, we need some
> alternative logo which people recognize as GNOME.
> 
> So, how about your culture? Is a foot considered offensive?
> 
> Thanks,