A proposed mascot

K

Thread Starter

Ken Crater

Hi all,
Jennifer Powell, apart from being the moderator of the Automation List, is also a commercial artist. She has created a mascot for the LinuxPLC project which I propose we adopt as a symbol and logo: the Puffin! (a small sea bird with lots of personality)

You can see her rendering at:
http://linuxplc.org/images/puffin.gif

Why is a puffin the perfect symbol for an open source controller?

Puffins are long-lived...
1. Puffins can live for more than 30 years, if they're lucky!
Puffins are fast...
2. A puffin can fly about 40 miles an hour, and will beat its wings about 300 to 400 times a minute.
Puffins are reliable...
3. Puffins usually return to the same burrow and nest with the same mate year after year.
Puffins are powerful...
4. Where soil conditions permit, puffins can tunnel eight feet or more underground when excavating a burrow.
Puffins are successful...
5. It is estimated that there are about 6 million pairs of puffins in the world.
Puffins are popular...
6. In Iceland puffins are part of a long-standing cultural connection to the sea. They are eaten in restaurants and homes.
Puffins participate fully in the oceanic economy...
7. The puffin's number-one enemy is the Great Black-backed Gull, which kills and eats adult puffins and chicks when it can catch them.

(puffin facts are courtesy of the Audubon Society Project Puffin
http://puffin.bird.audubon.org/, used by permission)

Linux has a penguin, we should have a puffin. I'd be glad to register it as a trademark in the U.S. and assign the rights to the project. What do you think?

Regards,
Ken Crater
[email protected]

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R
I vote yes too! Thanks, Jennifer.

As a side note, I'm not sure if LinuxPLC can be trademarked, but if so, can we ask Ken to do so and assign the rights to the project as well?

Rob Martin
[email protected]
 
K
Curt mentions...
>Sounds great to me too, Unfortunately there might be a
>problem with the Puffin Group Ltd, that is doing the Linux
>Port to HP hardware or Itanium, I forget which.

We missed that one (and we did an initial search)! However, there may not be a conflict, since Puffin Group has just been acquired by LinuxCare and is seemingly being absorbed
(http://www.thepuffingroup.com/newsworthy/pressreleases/1999121401.html). We'll contact them and see if they perceive a conflict.

Ken Crater
[email protected]

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On Tue, Jan 11, 2000 at 03:52:42PM -0500, Ken Crater wrote:
...
> Puffins are fast...
> 2. A puffin can fly about 40 miles an hour, and will beat its wings about
> 300 to 400 times a minute.

... and they look really cool flying under water (maybe they don't do 40 mph under water, but they're fast and agile).

--
Ken Irving
Trident Software
[email protected]


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Rob Martin asked...
>As a side note, I'm not sure if LinuxPLC can
>be trademarked, but if so, can we ask Ken to
>do so and assign the rights to the project as well?

I doubt that it can -- "descriptive" marks are not typically allowed registration. However, the puffin image is not "descriptive" of a PLC, and
therefore would be a good candidate. I suggested it because it could be used as a unique means of identification, protected for use only by those
using the open source product.

If we wanted to call this the Puffin Project (not to be confused with Audubon's Project Puffin :) we could use a (tm) by it and obtain common law
trademark protection that would probably stick. (BTW, I registered PuffinPLC.org just in case <grin>).

Ken Crater
[email protected]


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I doubt that "Project Puffin" would mean much to people outside the project. At least "LinuxPLC" tells what it's all about. Why make things more
difficult? Let's not get too "inside baseball" here.

Pete Cleaveland
I&CS


-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Crater <[email protected]>
To: '[email protected]' <[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2000 10:18 AM
Subject: RE: LinuxPLC: A proposed mascot


>Rob Martin asked...
>>As a side note, I'm not sure if LinuxPLC can
>>be trademarked, but if so, can we ask Ken to
>>do so and assign the rights to the project as well?
>
>I doubt that it can -- "descriptive" marks are not typically allowed
>registration. However, the puffin image is not "descriptive" of a PLC, and
>therefore would be a good candidate. I suggested it because it could be
>used as a unique means of identification, protected for use only by those
>using the open source product.
>
>If we wanted to call this the Puffin Project (not to be confused with
>Audubon's Project Puffin :) we could use a (tm) by it and obtain common
law
>trademark protection that would probably stick. (BTW, I registered
>PuffinPLC.org just in case <grin>).
>
>Ken Crater
>[email protected]
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>LinuxPLC mailing list
>[email protected]
>http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc


_______________________________________________
LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc
 
Although I hesitate to burden the list with further discussion aboutnontechnical issues, I think that, to be ultimately successful, a few
business and market issues do need to be addressed up front. Please forgive...

Pete Cleaveland asks:
>At least "LinuxPLC" tells what it's all about.
>Why make things more difficult?

As someone who's run a company with a generic-sounding name ("Control Technology Corporation") for the past 24 years, I can tell you the
advantages of having a unique (nondescriptive) name. There are perhaps a half-dozen other "Control Technology"s, and for about 23 of those years I've wished we had chosen a name like Zippy-doo Controls that no one else could use (or would want to? <grin>). Over the years, I've heard rumors that we're about to be acquired (news to me :), have already been acquired (*real* news to me), have gone out of business (ditto), etc., and have also received a number of support calls for product model numbers that are not in our catalog and never have been, all due to confusion with other companies.

It is pretty likely that, ultimately, there will be a number of "Linux PLCs" on the commercial market. Some of these will likely be unstable, expensive, slow, discontinued or otherwise subject to negative opinion and rumors, and
we don't want our project to be tainted by these.

If we choose a unique name, I don't think it will cause too much of a problem in the market once the project becomes known. It certainly didn't
hold back Apache (the most commonly-used webserver in the world) or any number of other open source projects with nondescriptive names. In fact, such names often lend character (dare I say "inspiration"?) to an effort.

I don't have any real stake in "Puffin Project" (apart from a minor investment in the domain name), but I do think we should attach a unique
name to the project.

Ken Crater, President
Zippy-doo Controls (er, oops, Control Technology Corp.)
[email protected]



_______________________________________________
LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc
 
On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 10:32:52AM -0500, Peterc wrote:
> I doubt that "Project Puffin" would mean much to people outside the
> project. At least "LinuxPLC" tells what it's all about. Why make things
> more difficult? Let's not get too "inside baseball" here.

We could always call it PuffinPLC (as somebody already joined it) to get
the best of both worlds.

That's assuming we *want* the PLC association. I believe there are those as
might prefer "Puffin Controller"; or something with a cool acronym.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
On the Internet, nobody knows if you are a @{[@{[open(0),<0>]}-1]}-line
perl script...

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LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
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M
Yeah, but don't forget one mans cool acronym is another mans joke (1131 does
POU's (just say it!) - Program Organisation Units).

[The French think the Euro is a cool sounding name, to the British it
invokes a picture of the money you used to get with your toy cash register
(looks like it too).]

;-))


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Behalf Of Jiri Baum
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: LinuxPLC: A proposed mascot

On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 10:32:52AM -0500, Peterc wrote:
> I doubt that "Project Puffin" would mean much to people outside the
> project. At least "LinuxPLC" tells what it's all about. Why make things
> more difficult? Let's not get too "inside baseball" here.

We could always call it PuffinPLC (as somebody already joined it) to get
the best of both worlds.

That's assuming we *want* the PLC association. I believe there are those as
might prefer "Puffin Controller"; or something with a cool acronym.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
On the Internet, nobody knows if you are a @{[@{[open(0),<0>]}-1]}-line
perl script...
_______________________________________________
LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc
 
M
Try www.thepuffingroup.org or www.puffingroup.org a puffin organ already
working on Linux projects.

There is the possibility of confusion with any name that is chosen (I like
OSICs, Open Source Industrial Control solutions).

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] On
Behalf Of Ken Crater
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: LinuxPLC: A proposed mascot

Although I hesitate to burden the list with further discussion about nontechnical issues, I think that, to be ultimately successful, a few
business and market issues do need to be addressed up front. Please forgive...

Pete Cleaveland asks:
>At least "LinuxPLC" tells what it's all about.
>Why make things more difficult?

As someone who's run a company with a generic-sounding name ("Control Technology Corporation") for the past 24 years, I can tell you the
advantages of having a unique (nondescriptive) name. There are perhaps a half-dozen other "Control Technology"s, and for about 23 of those years I've wished we had chosen a name like Zippy-doo Controls that no one else could use (or would want to? <grin>). Over the years, I've heard rumors that we're about to be acquired (news to me :), have already been acquired (*real* news to me), have gone out of business (ditto), etc., and have also received a number of support calls for product model numbers that are not in
our catalog and never have been, all due to confusion with other companies.

It is pretty likely that, ultimately, there will be a number of "Linux PLCs"
on the commercial market. Some of these will likely be unstable, expensive, slow, discontinued or otherwise subject to negative opinion and rumors, and we don't want our project to be tainted by these.

If we choose a unique name, I don't think it will cause too much of a problem in the market once the project becomes known. It certainly didn't
hold back Apache (the most commonly-used webserver in the world) or any
number of other open source projects with nondescriptive names. In fact,
such names often lend character (dare I say "inspiration"?) to an effort.

I don't have any real stake in "Puffin Project" (apart from a minor investment in the domain name), but I do think we should attach a unique
name to the project.

Ken Crater, President
Zippy-doo Controls (er, oops, Control Technology Corp.)
[email protected]
_______________________________________________
LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc
 
M
As long as it doesn't end up being a !@%!in' PLC! :)

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
On Behalf Of Jiri Baum
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: LinuxPLC: A proposed mascot

On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 10:32:52AM -0500, Peterc wrote:
> I doubt that "Project Puffin" would mean much to people outside the
> project. At least "LinuxPLC" tells what it's all about. Why make things
> more difficult? Let's not get too "inside baseball" here.

We could always call it PuffinPLC (as somebody already joined it) to get
the best of both worlds.

That's assuming we *want* the PLC association. I believe there are those as
might prefer "Puffin Controller"; or something with a cool acronym.


Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
On the Internet, nobody knows if you are a @{[@{[open(0),<0>]}-1]}-line
perl script...

_______________________________________________
LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc
 
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