Open Stack

On 02/15/2017 07:54 PM, Dan Prince wrote:
> At the high level all of this sounds like a fine grand plan: "Help
> projects create mascots" with a common theme. On the ground level I can
> tell you it feels a lot more like you are crushing the spirit of
> creativity and motivation for some of us.

Haven't we had this argument on the tech side enough? Do we have to have
it all over again just because there are some illustrators and
foundation staff involved?

We KEEP deciding as a community that we value cohesion for OpenStack
over individual projects having unlimited freedom to do whatever they
heck they want. This is no different. There are now a set of
logos/mascots that exist within a common visual language. Neat!

> What's in a mascot? I dunno. Call it a force of motivation. Call it
> team building. In fact, one of the first things I did as PTL of TripleO
> was create a mascot for the project. Perhaps not officially... but
> there was agreement among those in the project. And we liked the little
> guy. And he grew on us. And we even iterated on him a bit and made him
> better.

Yah - I hear that. But once again, if the project is "OpenStack" and not
just TripleO - that's exactly what's going on here. And the project _is_
OpenStack. That's what we're here to do, that's what we work on, that's
what we are members of a Foundation to support. Not TripleO, not Infra,
not Nova. This isn't the Oslo Foundation or the Ironic consortium. It's
OpenStack.

That means, for exactly the reasons you list, that it's important. It's
important to underscore and bolster the fact that we are One OpenStack.

> ----
> 
> 6 months or so ago we were presented with a new owl from the
> foundation... which had almost none of the same qualities as the
> original. Many of us took a survey about that and provided feedback,
> but I haven't found anyone who was really happy with it. Consensus was
> we liked the originals. Sometimes sticking with your roots is a good
> thing.
> 
> I happened to be off yesterday but I was really discouraged to read
> that the team is now convinced we have to adopt your version of the
> owl: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/tripleo/2017/tripleo.2017-
> 02-14-14.00.log.html
> 
> This all sounds like we are being "steamrolled" into using the new owl
> because things have to align. I'm not asking that you use our owl on
> your website. But if you want to... then great. I think it is possible
> to show that things work together without forcing them all to have the
> same mascot styles:
>  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about

Except that we are not the linux foundation. The linux foundation IS a
loose confederation of unrelated projects that happen to share a legal
parent entity. The LF does great work on behalf of those projects - but
that is not what we are.

> But I do think the OpenStack Foundation has overstated its case here
> and should reverse track a bit. Make it *clear* that projects can keep
> their own version of their mascots. In fact I think the foundation
> should encourage them to do so (keep the originals). The opposite seems
> be happening on several projects like TripleO and Ironic.
> 
> P.S. vintage TripleO owl "beany babies" would be super cool

Totally. Make a vintage beanine - that's an awesome idea. I'd wear one.
I've been considering trying to figure out how to make another "What the
F**k is OpenStack?" shirt because mine is dying. The past is cool. But
Dopenstack isn't the present - and honestly that's a good thing. So keep
a sense of nostalgia for the old owl ... but I do NOT think the
foundation should 'encourage' projects to 'keep' their originals. The
foundation is expressing that they cannot FORCE a project to do anything
- they do not have that power. But maybe alignment is a thing that can
happen without anyone forcing anyone else to do it?

It IS important for things to align. It IS important that we have a
sense of cohesion. Literally 100% of the cases where team individuality
has been placed over membership in the larger effort of OpenStack have
wound up being the source of discord and strife.

There is nothing stopping the existence of other art - it's art - it's
unstoppable! I don't expect John's sister to stop making swift shirts
(at least I certainly hope not). I don't expect to stop wearing them
because they're all amazing. But that can happen in parallel, and as a
group we can also embrace our official mascots too, in solidarity with
the other 3000 developers we fight the Open Source Cloud battle with on
a daily basis.

This doesn't have to be either/or and it doesn't have to be us vs. them.
It's ok to conform sometimes. This is definitely one of those times.

> Dan
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2017-02-15 at 13:26 -0800, Heidi Joy Tretheway wrote:
>> Hi Dan, 
>> I’m glad you asked! The value of creating a family of logos is in
>> communicating that OpenStack projects work together. While the some
>> of the designs of the existing mascots were great, none of them
>> looked like they were part of the same family, and that sent a
>> message to the market that the projects themselves didn’t necessarily
>> work well together. 
>>
>> Also, many teams told us they were happy to have design resources to
>> make a logo—about three-quarters of projects didn’t have an existing
>> logo, and many wanted one but didn’t have the ability to create their
>> own. It’s nice to be able to support all projects in the big tent on
>> an even footing.
>>
>> All teams were encouraged to choose their own mascots; none was
>> forced to select one, and projects with existing logos got the first
>> right to keep their mascots, which we worked to blend together in a
>> consistent style. We also allow projects with existing mascots to
>> continue printing vintage swag, like stickers and T-shirts, out of
>> respect for the great efforts of the developers who designed the
>> originals. 
>>
>> The new logos are used on official channels, like the website, and
>> they help us better showcase the projects as a group and promote
>> them. I’m working with a few projects that haven’t yet settled on a
>> design to ensure we can at least reach a compromise, such as for
>> TripleO in moving the design closer to the team’s original. (And on
>> that note - I’m doing my best to answer each question individually,
>> so I appreciate your patience.) 
>>
>> In any design undertaking—and especially with this one, which touches
>> 60+ project teams—there will be a lot of conflicting views. That’s
>> OK, and we’ve done our best to listen to feedback and adapt to teams’
>> preferences. I assure you this isn’t an effort to “corporatize” our
>> fabulous open source community, but rather to make it feel more
>> cohesive and connected. 
>>
>> I hope that when you see all of the logos together—and especially
>> when you hear more about why teams chose these mascots—that you’ll
>> enjoy them as much as I do. (Fun fact: Why did QA chose a little
>> brown bat as its mascot? Because that creature eats its weight in
>> bugs every day!) It’s been a real pleasure working with the community
>> on this project. 
>>
>> —Heidi Joy
>>
>>
>>> On Feb 15, 2017, at 12:52 PM, Dan Prince <dprince at redhat.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The fact that the foundation is involved in "streamlining" team
>>> logos
>>> just kind of makes me a bit sad I guess. I mean, what value is this
>>> really adding to the OpenStack projects?
>>>
>>> Devs on many projects spend their own time on creating logos...
>>> that
>>> they like. I say let them be happy and have their own logos. No
>>> harm
>>> here I think. Move along and let us focus on the important things.
>>>
>>> Dan
>>
>>
> 
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