Open Stack

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.

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.

----

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

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

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
> 
>