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by marshray 617 days ago
I remember my wife describing the funny look she got from our "traditional" next door neighbor as she took the latest edition of the BSD journal out of the mailbox. Never went any further than that.

But if you choose to use a literal hell-themed demon as your product's logo, don't be surprised if it limits your user base.

5 comments

We used to have Demon internet in the UK. The local vicar told us proudly that he was using it and thought it was funny.

Depends how backwards people are…

Their phone numbers all had 666 in them, if I recall correctly.
In England only about a fifth of the population believe in a literal devil. And the Anglican communion has never been of a literalist persuasion.
Typical :). Our one collects mistletoe and hands it out after Christmas service to acknowledge the old ways, and says so with a smile while passing it out!
I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap between the people who’d be willing/interested/able in running a BSD and those who think a drawing of their mascot means devil worshiping. If anything, it’s probably an effective (albeit unintentional) filter.
I don't think 'making it big' is the point of FreeBSD anyway. Right now the share of the desktop market is 0.01% (of which I'm a proud part)

I'm not hoping for 'the year of FreeBSD'. I wouldn't even want that to happen because with that comes much commercial involvement like Linux is seeing.

There's always reasons people don't choose a product and there's much much bigger ones leading people not to choose FreeBSD than this.

Cartoon devils are everywhere in pop culture, from deviled ham to Looney Tunes to sports mascots. If even a significant number of Christians cared enough to avoid associating with any company that has any kind of devil logo, there would be evidence of it as a trend in the market. As far as I know, no such evidence exists, therefore it's reasonable to assume that using a devil logo doesn't limit anyone's user base to any degree that matters.
It limits it for the better.
Bigotry goes both ways.