Re: Cultural Issue with the Foot Logo

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> Dave wrote:
>> When abandoning a logo, you are in essence saying that it has no value to you.

<snip>

> I think my view is very different from yours. You are trying to defend a
> logo, which has served GNOME for many years.

I am simply pointing out that (1) the logo has brand value and (2) a
change of logo is a costly operation (time, effort, communication,
money, loss of brand).

All changes as costly as this should be subjected to a cost/benefit
analysis of some sort. The benefit is "will not insult some people in
those countries where bare feet are insulting". The cost is currently
not known, and I don't think that you're considering it.

> The real question is how much harm the current
> GNOME logo does in relation to the benefit for keeping it.

Indeed. Or, to turn it around as I did, what is the benefit of changing
it compared to the cost.

> My view is that if the GNOME logo will keep some countries from even
> looking at GNOME as a viable desktop alternative than it does great harm
> to the whole project if the goal is to be acceptable in every country.

My view is that if people all over the world are using the GNOME desktop
as their primary computing environment, people in Thailand won't decide
not to use it because of the foot.

My other view is that (as has been said repeatedly on this list) GNOME
does not have a direct relationship with the consumer - the GNOME brand
is strong among distributors, Linux application developers, and
enthusiasts. Outside of that, the brand people see is Ubuntu, Debian,
Red Hat, ... So I'm not convinced that changing the logo will even gain
us any new users.

> There are things that GNOME will never fix, such as becoming closed
> source for people who are offended by open source - but there are things
> that are not essential to the core GNOME like a logo, documentation,...
> which can be changed if it seems wise to do so.

It is a mistake to think that because things are not core to GNOME (and
I agree that the logo isn't), then changing them is a cheap operation.
Changing documentation takes time and effort, changing the website takes
time and effort and technical resources, changing the logo takes time
and effort and communication resources.

If you want to evaluate the damage of the logo as it is, to have
sufficient data for a decision, you should also evaluate the cost of
changing it (very difficult to do before the change).

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org