[Mageia-dev] Art, Logo and Branding

Thu Sep 23 23:58:30 CEST 2010

Le jeudi 23 septembre 2010 à 16:17 -0400, Marc Paré a écrit :
+> I think in the grand scheme of things, we should all acknowledge that 
+> should the name "Mageia" not work, that a name change would be a 
+> possibility, just as a logo change is still a possibility. We have seen 
+> this from many OSS firms who went through this process.
+
+How do you assess that it is the name that do not work and that's not
+anything else ? 
+
+> We should be careful in making the distro too "cottagey" or "home grown" 
+> in looks and flavour. I would suggest that the long term vision for the 
+> distro also include a commercial aspect. There should be a community 
+> driven distro and a commercial distro (read server). 
+
+I fear that this scheme does look like too much the one that caused
+problem in the past within Mandriva community, with contradictions
+between the community nature and the more commercial version. 
+
+How would you ensure that the community version will not be seen as a
+cheap version of the commercial one ? How would you prevent this idea
+from destroying again the community like it did by the past ?
+
+If theses questions are not solved, I think all attempts to redo the
+mistakes of the past are bound to recreate the failures of the past.
+And I think that none of us think that's a desirable outcome. 
+
+All people who I asked the question said that the only solution is to
+have 2 different names and brandings.
+Redhat do it, and it work fine from them.
+Novell do it, and it work fine.
+Canonical do it ( to a lesser extend , since there was
+https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers/+bug/375345 ), and it work
+fine.
+
+Even debian based distro used a different name ( progeny, etc ).
+
+We didn't for Mandriva, and so started the confusion between the
+company, the distribution and the community. And so people didn't
+contribute because it was a business, and the idea that "updates were
+not free" stick around for a long time because it was hard to explain to
+people the different concept
+
+So if there is a business or commercial version, I think this would
+requires a different name and branding. Using the association name for
+that would not be right, in my opinion. 
+
+-- 
+Michael Scherer
+
+