<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 4:44 PM, R Kent James <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kent@caspia.com" target="_blank">kent@caspia.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
I'm getting a bit of pushback to my previously announced plans to
use <a href="http://monacoeye.com/birds/index_files/recurvirostra_avosetta_pied_avocet_08.jpg" target="_blank">Avocet</a>
and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Painted_Bunting_by_Dan_Pancamo.jpg" target="_blank">Bunting</a>
as branding for Thunderbird releases 38 and 45. I'm curious - do I
have any support for this, or do you think it's a bad idea? I would
appreciate feedback, just reply with your attitude on a scale of 1-5
with 1 being "I hate it" and 5 being "I love it" (this is for the
branding names, not for the graphics below).<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I will give it a 2.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
Briefly, the reasoning behind switching from Thunderbird
17/24/31/38/45 as major release branding to named versions using
alphabetical bird names is:<br>
<br>
1) Those numbers are meaningless to anyone who is not a gecko geek.
They was never intended as branding, it just accidentally resulted
when we cut back our release schedule to only use esr versions. Even
Firefox is trying to change this now (though we need not follow
Firefox here). The existing release branding is terrible.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I have never heard of any plans for Firefox to take up codenames for mainline releases.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
2) I want to counter the market sense that "Thunderbird is dead"
with a new message that we are alive and have an active community
moving forward. The <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/02/thunderbird-usage-continues-to-grow/" target="_blank">last
blog post</a> was a first step, and generated a lot of discussion
on the internet. A named release helps with that message, "38" does
not.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't know that branding is a good way to achieve this I think instead doing more blog posts highlighting each release and how many changes are going into them could achieve that? More marketing? We should have a booth at OSCON as an example! Do you think we could crowdfund the cost for having a banner and tablecloth made and maybe some swag? If so I could secure us a booth very likely and would be happy to man it if someone else came down and helped :)<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
3) Why birds? Well we are a bird, and birds have interesting shapes
and coloration that make interesting graphics targets. As one
concept for how to use this, I asked Elio Qoshi to come up with a
concept of a modified logo that we could use when we are referring
specifically to our next release. This would not replace our current
logo, only be used where the release is being mentioned, such as
blog posts, the about dialog, and start page. Here it is (or see
<a href="https://mesquilla.net/Thunderbird38Avocet-v4.jpg" target="_blank">https://mesquilla.net/Thunderbird38Avocet-v4.jpg</a> if the inline image
fails) Note that the Pied Avocet, which is the specific specie
being depicted here, has a distinctive <a href="http://monacoeye.com/birds/index_files/recurvirostra_avosetta_pied_avocet_08.jpg" target="_blank">black
and white coloration</a>:<br><br></div></blockquote><div><br><br></div><div>I do like the bird design though! Elio did a great job on it :)<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
<img src="cid:part5.00030907.03080608@caspia.com" alt=""><br>
<br>
R Kent James<br>
<br>
P. S. If you really hate it, see
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zb1qsVqjwg" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zb1qsVqjwg</a> which was a major theme
of my grad school lab, "It's good though!"<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">Benjamin Kerensa<br><a href="http://benjaminkerensa.com" target="_blank">http://benjaminkerensa.com</a></div>
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