[Fsf-web] the website and logo issue

[Vinay Pawar]

 Hi, 

   http://zoyd.tomk32.de/gnu/index.html
   http://zoyd.tomk32.de/gnu/boilerplate.html

Two things would help to make a website to look and feel 
Indian. 
   a) text 
   b) images
The GNU project's philosophy has been content instead of looks. 
To achieve this, both text and images should functionally or 
non-functionally be a part of the content. 
Text could be made Indian by greeting a visitor with a 
'Namaskaar' followed by a standard 'Welcome to the Free ....', 
projects could have Indian names, like Naba Kumar's Anjuta 
and Raju Mathur's VishwaKarma. 
Images should be used as sparingly as possible. I don't think 
we want to make another one of those Indian portals having 
images all over for no reason. 
Some pages could contain random images of places/festivals 
around the country with a small description of the image. 
These images would be contributed by hackers from their own 
city/state. Thereby encouraging involvement. Such images would 
be put only in pages that are the most viewed instead of all 
the pages.

It would be boring to have (fsf|gnu).org.in to be running 
phpnuke/slash/squish/zope and the likes. 
I volunteer to built the (fsf|gnu).org.in website, both 
backend and frontend. 
Could someone in the Board or close to it please maintain 
a offsite list of the tasks at hand and the volunteers working 
at it. 

My views on the FSF-I logo and logos in general. 
Logos are for easy identification of an entity. 
A Logo is similar to a brand. It needs time for people to 
associate a logo with an entity. The artwork of a logo must 
be such that it can be presented in all kinds of media. 
The most tricky and expensive is the print media. There are 
very different rules for offset multicolor, digital, screen, 
block printing, etc. The logo should not loose it's correctness 
and preferrably also it's effectiveness. There should not be 
a dependency on color. The GNU head as it is works well for 
most cases. 
The GNU head will almost never be used alone. 
It will be accompanied with the name 
'Free Software Foundation of India', on letter heads, 
visiting cards, brochures, flyers, etc. 
The Linux penguin doesn't have 'Linux' and 'http://www.linux.org' 
as a part of it's logo, nor do most logos. It was just a matter 
of time that people associated the penguin with 'Linux'. 
Making the name of the organisation a part of the logo artwork 
is not necessary. The name in a small font size serves no purpose 
when the name will appear again somewhere around it.
We have a handsome and well known logo. The more we use it as it 
is the better it's for us. 
Clarity, correctness and simplicity should be the mantra. 
Think about it.

Thanks, 
Vinay Pawar, 
Pune.