in reply to New mascot for Perl

This thread is bound to fail for exactly the same reason noone has picked up on the four year old RFC 343: it's expressing the wish for change, but leaving everything to others.

Come on, if you want a change, come with a proposal better than "let's do something". Pick a symbol. Make some sketches. Write a paragraph or two why it's a good symbol. People might not like it, and come up with other proposals. But get the ball rolling. Don't ask others to kick the ball first.

Abigail

(How about a tarpit? It looks disgusting from the outside, but once you dive in, it really gets stuck to you, and you'll never leave...)

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Re: Re: New mascot for Perl
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on May 13, 2004 at 23:36 UTC
    (How about a tarpit? It looks disgusting from the outside, but once you dive in, it really gets stuck to you, and you'll never leave...)i>

    And like a tarpit, your likely to find a load of old fossils (like me!) kicking around.

    Examine what is said, not who speaks.
    "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
    "Think for yourself!" - Abigail
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Re: Re: New mascot for Perl
by tilly (Archbishop) on May 13, 2004 at 23:47 UTC
    I'd prefer a black hole rather than a tarpit. Same idea, only more extreme. You can find some really cool-looking artist's conceptions of various black holes. And we don't have to explain the relevance until after you've crossed the event horizon...
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Re: Re: New mascot for Perl
by guha (Priest) on May 14, 2004 at 08:13 UTC

    In the Unixian tradition of giving enough rope to hang yourself, shoot yourself in the foot, the Swiss Army Tool, Perl gives permanent damages to your brain, etc. this picture could be applicable.

    Really I like your tarpit best, but how to make a symbol of that ?

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Re: Re: New mascot for Perl
by Trag (Monk) on May 14, 2004 at 11:44 UTC
    You're right, Abigail. I should have posted a suggestion. To be perfectly honest, I don't think a tarpit really works, IMHO. All I've thought of is a stylized letter P, maybe with Perl-ish coloring. Or perhaps a Perl necklace? I'm at a bit of a loss to be honest.

    Trag

    P.S. Ooh I thought of one! How about a penguin?

    *********************************************
    print "Just another iconoclastic Perl hacker";
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      What is the color of perl? Surely not octarine!
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Re: Re: New mascot for Perl
by Anonymous Monk on May 14, 2004 at 10:38 UTC
    Why not just get someone to draw a different, non-copyrighted camel? O'Reilly surely own the copyright on that particular camel, not camels in general. Have it face the other way, un-cross its legs, give it a straw-hat, whatever, aslong as it is significantly different, there is no problem.
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      The problem is not the copyright. They have a copyright on that purticular drawing of a camel. They also have a trademark on the use of a camel for the perl language.

      Trademarks are strange things in some ways. Trademarks cover anything "confusingly similar". That would certianly cover the use of a different camel for the perl language. Similarly, I couldn't create a computer compony named Internal Busniess Machines, and call myself IBM, because somebody might confuse me with the real IBM.

      Even stranger, is that trademarks must be defended, or they will be lost. That means that even if O'Reilly wanted, they couldn't let just anybody use the camel, without their explicit permission. If they do that, they can no longer keep the people they don't want to use the camel from using it -- it falls into the public domain.

      http://perl.oreilly.com/usage/ gives more info on O'Reilly and the camel. For more information on trademark law, google is your friend.

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I suggest this (small black hole joke)
by tachyon (Chancellor) on May 14, 2004 at 02:33 UTC
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    In Section Meditations