7 ms·

I don't really enjoy these submissions making fun of other people for their free, open source work. Yesterday there was this thread about the "three = 1" in th

by simias 13y ago

I don't really enjoy these submissions making fun of other people for their free, open source work. Yesterday there was this thread about the "three = 1" in the linux kernel source code, now this. If you don't like them I'm sure most of those project would welcome a new design. Not to mention that many of those projects are tremendously useful and complex pieces of code. So what if gcc or gmp don't have cool logos? It's not as if they needed to market them.

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
This is what happens when we believe that open-source needs marketing to succeed: everyone who doesn't put in the time to make a Bootstrap-based landing page, buy a domain, and create branding is then viewed as lesser-quality. Why would I want to create any of that crap? I already write docs, comment, and keep up with it on Github. Never mind that some of the linked projects are tackling problems orders of magnitude more difficult and hairy than some commenters here will even fathom undertaking in their 'careers.'
- sgdesign 13y ago
  This has nothing to do with marketing, it's more a question of taste in my opinion. It's hard to argue that these logos don't all look extremely dated.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
  > This is what happens when we believe that open-source needs marketing to succeed It does, if you want it or not. A project that is not being marketed will not be successful. If you are suggesting that GNU has no marketing you're wrong. GNU might have marketing not everybody agrees with, but it has a lot of it.
  - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
    > GNU might have marketing not everybody agrees with, but it has a lot of it. Exactly. It's just a different type of marketing from the Bootstrap-powered, coffee-house-backdrop intro video with indie guitar: "Hi! My name's Rob! Sometimes, I need to cross-compile to an embedded..."
  - weland 13y ago
    > It does, if you want it or not. A project that is not being marketed will not be successful. The homepage of vim, the editor every hipster who wants to look like a Unix greybeard tries to learn as if it were the holy grail of programming knowledge, has a very 1990s look. It also has more users than a lot of startup-published tools that claim to revolutionize how you do X. There's no bootstrap landing page shit, no ads and no pitches. It finds users by word of mouth but there's very little actual advocating and no intentional conversion effort so as to deserve the word "marketing". No one tries to sell you vim, or make you open an account with it or anything else. Same with emacs, autogen and emms and whatever.
    - the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
      > The homepage of vim, the editor every hipster who wants to look like a Unix greybeard tries to learn as if it were the holy grail of programming knowledge, has a very 1990s look. But that's often not how people perceive vim these days because other channels have started filling the void. Vim's marketing these days is people referring the editor to others and letting them know how cool it can be. Just because the original developer does not do marketing does not mean that other people won't fill the void. I for instance have been using vim for years and years and I'm very commonly showing off my vim setup to others at conferences and sharing my configuration online, tweeting screenshots etc.
    - pekk 13y ago
      Did it occur to you that people use vim because it's useful, and not just because they are hipsters who want to look like Unix greybeards?
- jfoster 13y ago
  That this was posted to make fun of the logos is one possibility, but I'd prefer to think that the poster might have wanted to simply bring attention to it. Knowing there's a problem is the first step toward resolving the problem, right? I completely agree that the GNU projects are very useful. That said, no matter how useful and valuable a product is, all that value is simply lost if no one uses it. Making these projects more attractive to people not already familiar with them will help them to flourish the way that they should.
  - asdfaoeu 13y ago
    I think most would consider that at best a distraction. More often then not overly flashy websites seem to look bad on my book. To me it seems more like they are trying to slip something under the rug while simple designs come across as more focused. Like http://prgmr.com http://prgmr.com http://tarsnap.com http://tarsnap.com and http://nearlyfreespeech.net http://nearlyfreespeech.net .
    - dysoco 13y ago
      I agree, I'd rather have a website like http://www.slackware.com/ http://www.slackware.com/ than any of that bootstrap stuff.
      - aestra 13y ago
        It is worth noting that the Slackware homepage hasn't changed much in almost 15 years. The only changed they seemed to have made is changing it from a white text on back background design to a black text on white background design very early on. https://web.archive.org/web/19991117022152/http://slackware.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991117022152/http://slackware....
      - sbuk 13y ago
        Why? The "bootstrap" stuff utilises modern, standards based semantic markup. The linked site is poor both aesthetically and technically.
  - 13y ago
- w0utert 13y ago
  Maybe open-source does actually need marketing and an appearance of quality and modernity to 'succeed', whether you like it or not. Code quality or complexity is often invisible and largely irrelevant to end-users (as long as the tool does the job), and it's a known fact of life that people are (at least initially) attracted to things that look good. If I just look at myself as someone who's been using OSS for years, and absolutely depends on tools like gcc for my day-to-day work, even despite all that I still sometimes find myself discarding certain OSS software solutions I have no prior experience with, for nothing else but a crappy amateurish logo or an ugly website. I know it doesn't say anything about how good the software is, but somehow it's an instinctive reaction, which I think is pretty universal among humans. In a broader sense, if you look at some of the reactions this article seems to trigger, I think you can safely see that tunnel-vision and a complete disregard of the differences between OSS developers and potential OSS users is a huge missed opportunity. You can be confident in the quality, complexity and utility of a piece of software whatever you like, but that doesn't 'sell' it to end-users. If OSS wants broader acceptence and ever become a real-alternative to commercial software it needs superficial polish and marketing. This may not be relevant for compilers or debuggers, but it is relevant for tools facing non-developer end-users.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Nothing's preventing you or anyone else with good graphic sense to jump in the team and propose better logos. That's what OSS is about: sharing and improving each other's work.
enscr 13y ago
Well said. If you don't like it, improve & contribute. I'm indebted to the amount of amazing tools available by GNU and can't imagine how much they've contributed to the growth of numerous lean startups. Not all open source contributors are great designers and they mostly do this in their spare time.
stinos 13y ago
making fun of other people not sure the intent really is to make fun of people. I read it as (light) criticism, which isn't the same thing, and which should be allowed by all means preferrably without people getting all politically correct about it. Imo. Apart from that: I'm no designer but some of these logos look hideous to me. Though I also think some of them are just meant to be like that, as a f*k you statement: "it's about the content, not about the logo". Which is prefectly understandable: ever had to come up with a decent original logo? That can take days which could as well be spent programing for instance.
- stkni 13y ago
  > ever had to come up with a decent original logo? Yes, don't under-estimate the time-cost of this for non-designers. I tried it once. The design sucked, I got advice and got totally lost in a 3 day tour of typography and colour theory. In the end I think it looked ok but it was a lot of effort for apparently 'not much' output. However as others have pointed out this kind-of presentation IS important and totally worth it.
cinskiy 13y ago
Redesigning them is actually a very good opportunity for someone in need of a good portfolio.
FleshGordon 13y ago
I don't think that open source should be above making us laugh every once in a while. You can look at this way instead: The focus is on good code, not nice logos which fits the Linux image well.
nzp 13y ago
Maybe the intent wasn't to make fun in a malicious way. If hackers can't have a little fun at their expense, who can? Complaining about `three = 1` was a complete miss though.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
oleganza 13y ago
I view a project as a whole: its face, its code, its features. If people can criticize elegance or efficiency of the code, why can't they criticize elegance or efficiency of its brand? Rails, for instance, is an example of a project where people did not just "do code", but also promoted best practices, designed a nice website, created a blog etc. That inspired Ruby & RubyGems to ultimately have nice websites and logos, contributed for free by professional designers. Any open source project will help more people if it has a friendly face: well-documented code, nice logo, well-written articles explaining motivation behind technical decisions and so on. All of this contributes to the project's overall utility.
- zorked 13y ago
  There's a product/market fit thing going on here. Rails is the kind of project that caters to the kind of people who value and can contribute "nice websites and logos" because that is what a lot of them do for a living with Rails. Add a startup-like website to the GNU binutils project and it's going to look pretty dumb to the no-nonsense crowd that needs assemblers. A "nice website" website is not going to extend the appeal of cross-assembling ARM microcontroller code on a x86-64 one bit.
erre 13y ago
I agree in principle. But, in fairness, I felt that the "three = 1" post was out of genuine puzzlement. I was certainly puzzled when I saw it, and it was very enlightening to see lifthrasiir's answer.
sergiotapia 13y ago
No need to get pissy - nothing is above mockery and open source is not an exception. > If you don't like them I'm sure most of those project would welcome a new design. Funny you should mention that, I literally did this - once. Wanted to improve the landing page for an open source project and improve the logo. The maintainers wouldn't have any of it. In their eyes the project was fine the way it is. And this isn't just one project. I bet if I were to go to cgraph with a better logo they would reject it. Open source folks are stubborn as a donkey 90% of the time.
binarnosp 13y ago
Adult package maintainers are having a laugh at their own logos. Teenage package maintainers are getting offended.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
A better response to criticism would be to try and learn why people think they are terrible instead of looking for a reason to feel insulted. Whether OP is making fun or not isn't even important. Let him have a go if he wants. Whatever his motivation is, he's got a point. The logos are terrible. These aren't necessarily subjective judgments; there is such a thing as best practices for logo design. Remember what a logo is for. Hint, it isn't to entertain the programmers or designers. It is meant to be a visual cue to help people recognize your group/company/club/whatever. It should be simple and concise among other things. > It's not as if they needed to market them. I disagree, IMO a wider userbase is usually a good thing for GNU/Open Source projects, for the community, and for the software/services industry as a whole. >Yesterday there was this thread about the "three = 1" in the linux kernel source code, Yes, and that thread generated a reasonable discussion about programming. How is that a bad thing? Do you think someone will stop using ext4 or Linux because of a questionable variable name in a rarely used bit of filesystem code?

by simias 13y ago

mattgreenrocks 13y ago

This is what happens when we believe that open-source needs marketing to succeed: everyone who doesn't put in the time to make a Bootstrap-based landing page, buy a domain, and create branding is then viewed as lesser-quality. Why would I want to create any of that crap? I already write docs, comment, and keep up with it on Github. Never mind that some of the linked projects are tackling problems orders of magnitude more difficult and hairy than some commenters here will even fathom undertaking in their 'careers.'

sgdesign 13y ago
This has nothing to do with marketing, it's more a question of taste in my opinion. It's hard to argue that these logos don't all look extremely dated.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
> This is what happens when we believe that open-source needs marketing to succeed It does, if you want it or not. A project that is not being marketed will not be successful. If you are suggesting that GNU has no marketing you're wrong. GNU might have marketing not everybody agrees with, but it has a lot of it.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  > GNU might have marketing not everybody agrees with, but it has a lot of it. Exactly. It's just a different type of marketing from the Bootstrap-powered, coffee-house-backdrop intro video with indie guitar: "Hi! My name's Rob! Sometimes, I need to cross-compile to an embedded..."
- weland 13y ago
  > It does, if you want it or not. A project that is not being marketed will not be successful. The homepage of vim, the editor every hipster who wants to look like a Unix greybeard tries to learn as if it were the holy grail of programming knowledge, has a very 1990s look. It also has more users than a lot of startup-published tools that claim to revolutionize how you do X. There's no bootstrap landing page shit, no ads and no pitches. It finds users by word of mouth but there's very little actual advocating and no intentional conversion effort so as to deserve the word "marketing". No one tries to sell you vim, or make you open an account with it or anything else. Same with emacs, autogen and emms and whatever.
  - the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
    > The homepage of vim, the editor every hipster who wants to look like a Unix greybeard tries to learn as if it were the holy grail of programming knowledge, has a very 1990s look. But that's often not how people perceive vim these days because other channels have started filling the void. Vim's marketing these days is people referring the editor to others and letting them know how cool it can be. Just because the original developer does not do marketing does not mean that other people won't fill the void. I for instance have been using vim for years and years and I'm very commonly showing off my vim setup to others at conferences and sharing my configuration online, tweeting screenshots etc.
  - pekk 13y ago
    Did it occur to you that people use vim because it's useful, and not just because they are hipsters who want to look like Unix greybeards?
jfoster 13y ago
That this was posted to make fun of the logos is one possibility, but I'd prefer to think that the poster might have wanted to simply bring attention to it. Knowing there's a problem is the first step toward resolving the problem, right? I completely agree that the GNU projects are very useful. That said, no matter how useful and valuable a product is, all that value is simply lost if no one uses it. Making these projects more attractive to people not already familiar with them will help them to flourish the way that they should.
- asdfaoeu 13y ago
  I think most would consider that at best a distraction. More often then not overly flashy websites seem to look bad on my book. To me it seems more like they are trying to slip something under the rug while simple designs come across as more focused. Like http://prgmr.com http://prgmr.com http://tarsnap.com http://tarsnap.com and http://nearlyfreespeech.net http://nearlyfreespeech.net .
  - dysoco 13y ago
    I agree, I'd rather have a website like http://www.slackware.com/ http://www.slackware.com/ than any of that bootstrap stuff.
    - aestra 13y ago
      It is worth noting that the Slackware homepage hasn't changed much in almost 15 years. The only changed they seemed to have made is changing it from a white text on back background design to a black text on white background design very early on. https://web.archive.org/web/19991117022152/http://slackware.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991117022152/http://slackware....
    - sbuk 13y ago
      Why? The "bootstrap" stuff utilises modern, standards based semantic markup. The linked site is poor both aesthetically and technically.
- 13y ago
w0utert 13y ago
Maybe open-source does actually need marketing and an appearance of quality and modernity to 'succeed', whether you like it or not. Code quality or complexity is often invisible and largely irrelevant to end-users (as long as the tool does the job), and it's a known fact of life that people are (at least initially) attracted to things that look good. If I just look at myself as someone who's been using OSS for years, and absolutely depends on tools like gcc for my day-to-day work, even despite all that I still sometimes find myself discarding certain OSS software solutions I have no prior experience with, for nothing else but a crappy amateurish logo or an ugly website. I know it doesn't say anything about how good the software is, but somehow it's an instinctive reaction, which I think is pretty universal among humans. In a broader sense, if you look at some of the reactions this article seems to trigger, I think you can safely see that tunnel-vision and a complete disregard of the differences between OSS developers and potential OSS users is a huge missed opportunity. You can be confident in the quality, complexity and utility of a piece of software whatever you like, but that doesn't 'sell' it to end-users. If OSS wants broader acceptence and ever become a real-alternative to commercial software it needs superficial polish and marketing. This may not be relevant for compilers or debuggers, but it is relevant for tools facing non-developer end-users.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Nothing's preventing you or anyone else with good graphic sense to jump in the team and propose better logos. That's what OSS is about: sharing and improving each other's work.

enscr 13y ago

Well said. If you don't like it, improve & contribute. I'm indebted to the amount of amazing tools available by GNU and can't imagine how much they've contributed to the growth of numerous lean startups. Not all open source contributors are great designers and they mostly do this in their spare time.

stinos 13y ago

making fun of other people not sure the intent really is to make fun of people. I read it as (light) criticism, which isn't the same thing, and which should be allowed by all means preferrably without people getting all politically correct about it. Imo. Apart from that: I'm no designer but some of these logos look hideous to me. Though I also think some of them are just meant to be like that, as a f*k you statement: "it's about the content, not about the logo". Which is prefectly understandable: ever had to come up with a decent original logo? That can take days which could as well be spent programing for instance.

stkni 13y ago
> ever had to come up with a decent original logo? Yes, don't under-estimate the time-cost of this for non-designers. I tried it once. The design sucked, I got advice and got totally lost in a 3 day tour of typography and colour theory. In the end I think it looked ok but it was a lot of effort for apparently 'not much' output. However as others have pointed out this kind-of presentation IS important and totally worth it.

cinskiy 13y ago

Redesigning them is actually a very good opportunity for someone in need of a good portfolio.

FleshGordon 13y ago

I don't think that open source should be above making us laugh every once in a while. You can look at this way instead: The focus is on good code, not nice logos which fits the Linux image well.

nzp 13y ago

Maybe the intent wasn't to make fun in a malicious way. If hackers can't have a little fun at their expense, who can? Complaining about `three = 1` was a complete miss though.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

oleganza 13y ago

I view a project as a whole: its face, its code, its features. If people can criticize elegance or efficiency of the code, why can't they criticize elegance or efficiency of its brand? Rails, for instance, is an example of a project where people did not just "do code", but also promoted best practices, designed a nice website, created a blog etc. That inspired Ruby & RubyGems to ultimately have nice websites and logos, contributed for free by professional designers. Any open source project will help more people if it has a friendly face: well-documented code, nice logo, well-written articles explaining motivation behind technical decisions and so on. All of this contributes to the project's overall utility.

zorked 13y ago
There's a product/market fit thing going on here. Rails is the kind of project that caters to the kind of people who value and can contribute "nice websites and logos" because that is what a lot of them do for a living with Rails. Add a startup-like website to the GNU binutils project and it's going to look pretty dumb to the no-nonsense crowd that needs assemblers. A "nice website" website is not going to extend the appeal of cross-assembling ARM microcontroller code on a x86-64 one bit.

erre 13y ago

I agree in principle. But, in fairness, I felt that the "three = 1" post was out of genuine puzzlement. I was certainly puzzled when I saw it, and it was very enlightening to see lifthrasiir's answer.

sergiotapia 13y ago

No need to get pissy - nothing is above mockery and open source is not an exception. > If you don't like them I'm sure most of those project would welcome a new design. Funny you should mention that, I literally did this - once. Wanted to improve the landing page for an open source project and improve the logo. The maintainers wouldn't have any of it. In their eyes the project was fine the way it is. And this isn't just one project. I bet if I were to go to cgraph with a better logo they would reject it. Open source folks are stubborn as a donkey 90% of the time.

binarnosp 13y ago

Adult package maintainers are having a laugh at their own logos. Teenage package maintainers are getting offended.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

A better response to criticism would be to try and learn why people think they are terrible instead of looking for a reason to feel insulted. Whether OP is making fun or not isn't even important. Let him have a go if he wants. Whatever his motivation is, he's got a point. The logos are terrible. These aren't necessarily subjective judgments; there is such a thing as best practices for logo design. Remember what a logo is for. Hint, it isn't to entertain the programmers or designers. It is meant to be a visual cue to help people recognize your group/company/club/whatever. It should be simple and concise among other things. > It's not as if they needed to market them. I disagree, IMO a wider userbase is usually a good thing for GNU/Open Source projects, for the community, and for the software/services industry as a whole. >Yesterday there was this thread about the "three = 1" in the linux kernel source code, Yes, and that thread generated a reasonable discussion about programming. How is that a bad thing? Do you think someone will stop using ext4 or Linux because of a questionable variable name in a rarely used bit of filesystem code?