Re: [seul-edu] [Fwd: Debian-kids goals (draft)]: cartoon characters

[Thomas Tempé <thomas@J436-b.resJ.insa-lyon.fr>]

A lot of people wrote:

*> > > Making Debian desirable to kids
*> > > -------------------------------
*> > > The primary goal of the debian-kids project is to make Debian an 
OS our
*> > > kids *want* to run.  This involves some sensitivity to the needs 
of kids
*> >
*> 
*> I believe a cute desktop with their favorite characters and a few 
icons that
*> launch games/apps that they like is what kids want. They certainly 
don't care
*> about what is running the show.  They just want it to work every 
time.
*> 

Here's where it hurts: favorite characters are commercial(tm), and I 
don't think Disney(c) would give his success characters out for nothing, 
just for the sake of making the world a little better.

Are there any Free cartoon characters out there? (I know this deviates 
from the threat, but I always felt that cultural milestones like cartoon 
characters were one of the things you could not build a Free world 
without.)

The thing is not about having a Free drawing of a potential cartoon 
hero, but to have a Free character around which a culture has been 
built. Disney characters would not sell without the movies to back them 
up.

One good thing is that we already have Tux, the herring-eating pinguin. 
Games are building up around him (quest for the lost herring, Pingus, 
and probably more). Plus the whole geek culture and commercial doing 
around Linux have a lot of pinguins in them. Maybe we could keep in mind 
that having other "Tux' friends" around would make for a potential set 
of Free "favorite characters" to build a Free culture around. 
First, let's settle a few things around Tux (like herrings, his living 
place, and whatever else), then maybe we can introduce other characters, 
like the BSD devil (Huug, why did they choose a devil?) and why not the 
Gnome gnome, the FSF GNU, or even Tux's friend Linus? (Yeah! And the 
next thing you know, he'll be singing songs on kid's saturnday morning 
shows on TV!:)

This might well bring us something that altrough seemingly neglectable, 
could make the environment more attractive: cultural coherence. This is 
what all corporate ... bodies trying buy themselves children have been 
doing to date, ranging from McDonalds* to Disney*.

(* huh property of their respective owners)

Ok, this should probably lead us to little work by itself (art work?), 
but it may come up as an underlying idea, that could well help extend 
the Free (software) philosophy well beyond software.

'hope this helps...

Thomas Tempé

--
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
                -- R. S. Barton

PS: Oh, and the Pope's picture! He hasn't been copyrighted yet, right?