In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, JTK wrote: > Chris Hoess wrote: >> >> In article <98p18.3576$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Trolling wrote: >> > I'm not kidding .. try this link while it's still up: >> > >> > http://www.mozilla.org/party/1998/mozilla.gif >> > >> > > Trolling: You saw the one that was literally lifted off the side of a > WWII Yakovlev, right? I can't find the Mozilla commie graphics page > right now after almost a second of half-looking, but here's the Yak > paint scheme: > > http://home.att.net/~historyzone/Yak1.jpg > > Probably used some new form of experimental Silly-Putty.
For shame. A few more seconds, and you could have found the IRC logs where we pledge allegiance to the mummified corpse of Lenin. After all, a grand conspiracy to glorify the Soviet Empire is the only conceivable explanation. >> Well, let me take your posting record (rather than your handle) at face >> value and assume you're interested in reasonable dialogue. >> >> 1) This issue has been argued over here. A lot. People's reaction to the >> symbol tends to vary greatly. This may depend on how much they've been >> exposed to Communism in life; I can't say. >> > > It doesn't vary much at all actually. You have two main groups: > > 1. Those who are extremely offended by the blatant commie graphics and > demand that they be replaced by any one of the many suitable > replacements that have been offered over the years. > 2. Apologists who are "practiced at the art of self-deception" (to put > it needlessly kindly) and pitifully attempt to deny the blatant > communist connections. > > Who am I missing? 3. The people whose strongest impressions of Communism are Yakov Smirnoff jokes, it having been 12 years since the Berlin Wall fell and 11 since the Soviet Union collapsed. Throw in the fact that the graphics are mostly tucked out of the way, and I'd venture to say that 90%+ of the people actually downloading builds haven't noticed the symbolism, or haven't realized what it is. (Especially since the hammer and sickle is considerably more recognizable in most people's minds.) Bear in mind that the community of people actually downloading Mozilla and filing bugs is a very large superset of the posters here, and the first is not necessarily reflective of the second. >> 2) The people in charge of the logo are aware of this. > > I have seen no statements to that effect, nor any indication of what any > "awareness" they may have of the issue may at some far future date > result in. Of course they can't *not* be aware of it, but if you have > some non-behind-closed-doors documentation to this effect, I know many > of us here would love to see it. I find your assertion hard to believe, as The Powers That Be have stated on the newsgroup that they were collecting replacement art, but weren't moving to replace the images in the builds because of the licensing issue I mentioned below. >> They aren't >> changing the logo right now, because there are legal issues involving the >> distribution of the images under the MPL/GPL/LGPL conflicting with >> Mozilla's desire to retain control over the logo. >> > > Please. Make a new friggin' logo, or take one of the myriad already > offered, and put it in there. AOL has the same rights to the new one as > the old one, and the same rights to the old one that it always had. > Even easier, pull down the commie banner page, which serves absolutely > no purpose other than to offend. Given that [EMAIL PROTECTED] have been advised by actual lawyers, I am inclined to agree with their position, that the licensing status of trademarked images in a copyleft-licensed package is unclear. Given that people who find the red star and Constructivist art offensive will still be offended by the logos in About Mozilla, &etc., I'm not sure I see the advantage of tossing the art out piece by piece, especially since http://www.mozilla.org/banners/ is not at all well-publicized. >> 3) It has been intimated that the distribution of this logo in Mozilla >> packages may already have deprived mozilla.org of control over the logo. > > And we go from Red Communism to Red Herring. AOL has complete control > over what graphics are and are not part of the Mozilla distribution. > What some hypothetical third party might do with the commie art has at > no time concerned anybody here. Irrelevant, since I introduced this particular fact in order to explain my next sentence. >> If this is so, the logo will have to be replaced once the licensing of the >> images has been settled. >> > > Ok, I'll bite even though that's completely spurious: Is there any > commitment from the Powers that Be to do so at that time? Is there any > indication whatsoever that they will? Again, I have seen nothing to > that effect. Perhaps reading over the archives of this newsgroup would help. If you're asserting that mozilla.org would continue to use as its official logo an image which it could not prevent from being misappropriated, I think people will disagree with you. >> 4) The logo appears to have been formulated as, if anything, a mild parody >> of Communism, not a declaration of sympathy. > > Looks like you're fitting into group #2 here. It's not just a single > logo, it's also a whole page full of communist Maozilla "art", *and > nothing but*. It would be outrageous if it wasn't so sophomoric. Huh? The fact that the art appears in volume does nothing to change its motivation. As I pointed out above, there's a component of group #3 who are familiar with Communism largely as some sort of vague and laughable bogeyman. Whether or not it's reasonable (and I don't think it is), most of the U.S. population tends to take Communism less seriously than, say, Naziism; trying to brand people as deliberately insensitive for parodying the first just reveals a lack of cultural awareness. > But where's the artist in all this? Haven't heard peep one from > him/her. I say let's hear the artist's explanation as to where the > commie vibe came from and what the hell he was thinking. Perhaps the artist doesn't read these newsgroups; many people do not. >> (Imagine the reaction of a >> typical Marxist bureaucrat upon hearing the "Open Source Revolution" >> compared to the Communist Revolution!) >> > > Imagine his reaction when he learned that AOL owned the product, and > (for a while at least) got people to work on it for *free*, and not even > at the point of a PPSh-41. "Great Stalin's Ghost! What have *we* been > doing wrong?!?!" Well, I imagine a certain amount of that would be cleared up when someone pointed out to him that the person explaining the MPL didn't know what he was talking about. And more so, when he found out that the hosting company for Bugzilla, Tinderbox, et al. didn't accept rubles. (Although on the whole he'd probably be amazed that there wasn't a Central Patch Planning Department that wrote up when each patch would be developed and checked in and what they would contain...a year in advance.) -- Chris Hoess
