This bike-shedding discussion seems almost played out, and I assume people will go on making practical decisions about databases with or without logos and mantras like "CouchDB has started, time to relax."
So I should probably just shut up at this point. But it's hard to resist adding one more anecdotal perspective to the mix. Back in 2010, while bumbling my way toward writing a textile-design application for artists, I heard about couchdb, its replication features and its ability to store documents with varied and changing types of data. "Great!" I thought, "Just what I need for storing and sharing documents that describe textile designs in a still-evolving format." There followed some bleak days and months as I struggled to learn something about couchdb (plus nginx and nodejs -- all immature and short on documentation back then) and to get all this software to work together. Throughout that struggle the man-on-the-couch logo and wildly optimistic "time to relax" tag line sustained me. I loved the logo for its vaguely non-corporate feel (more human than pure abstraction, more fine-art than pop-art). The logo felt empowering to me. I took it as saying, in effect, that it's OK to put one's foot up on the couch sometimes, OK to start a project without knowing where it's going, without having reduced all foreseeable documents to a known SQL schema. In short, the initial branding of couchdb (and what I read about Damien Katz's intentions) seemed to me an invitation to developer creativity. --Catherine
