Adopt 🦀 (crab) emoji as rust community? (donation to Unicode Consortium): update: polls

community
1

Yesterday I learned about the Unicode Consortium's "Adopt a character" program.
This program allow anyone to sponsor/adopt a character, and the Consortium uses this money to drive the inclusion of ever more languages/scripts into the Unicode standard, thus furthering their goal of global inclusivity for all languages and cultures into the digital world.

Since rust is a big on inclusiveness, a big user of Unicode, and brings proper unicode support into the deepest depths of systems programming (by including it in libcore), I thought I'd ask around if we, as rust community, would like to spread the love, support unicode, and adopt the :crab: emoji, U+1F980

Unicode allows anyone to adopt any character;

  • for $100 one gets a non-exclusive "bronze level" sponsorship
  • for $1.000 one receives a "silver level" sponsorship, limited to at most 5 silver sponsors per character
  • for $5.000 one lucky person/group becomes the exclusive gold level sponsor.
    (higher levels do not prevent the lower levels from being claimed)

If there is any interest in this, I could open a gofundme, kickstarter or similar campaign, to collect funding.
I'd suggest that the tag-line that would appear on the list of adopted characters should be "Ferris the friendly Rustacean - rust-lang.org"

We would be in good company, such as ":speech_balloon:" sponsored by our very own forum-provider, discourse.org, or "father of the internet" Vint G. Serf, who sponsored ":vulcan_salute:"

P.S. If you'd like to know how close to Ferris this emoji is rendered on different systems, emojipedia has us covered
P.P.S. Of course, we could also adopt other characters, such as the lifetime ' (apostrophe), or the ⛭ (U+26ED, Gear Without Hub), if that sounds like more fun :slight_smile:

Update: polls
Since there seems to be a pretty lively discussion, here's a structured way for everybode to give their opinion (Not meant to discourage posting, just to automate the score-keeping). Please do explain your reasoning, and feel free to suggest alternatives!

Which character do you think the community should adopt?

adopt ..

  • :crab: - U+1F980 / Crab emoji / Ferris
  • ' - U+0027 APOSTROPHE / lifetime tickmark
  • ⛭ - U+26ED GEAR WITHOUT HUB
  • :gear: - U+2699 / GEAR (with hub)
  • other (reply with suggestion)

0 voters

In whose name should we adopt whatever character we should adopt?
adopt in name of ...

  • "Ferris the friendly rustacean"
  • "The Rust Community"
  • "Rustaceans for Unicode"
  • Other (reply with suggestion)

0 voters

URL to include
(URLs can only be hyperlinked at silver or gold levels, but can be included as text at bronze)

0 voters

40 Likes
2

I'd be in.

2 Likes
3

I'd contribute!

2 Likes
4

I would contribute!

1 Like
5

As would I.

1 Like
6

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone!
Seems I'll be doing more detailed research into funding platforms :smiley: :heart:

7

Can I vote for ', instead of the crab? There are plenty of other groups with tight relationships to crabs, but the ML languages are the only other ones I can think of with a similar connection to the apostrophe.

6 Likes
8

I remember a bunch of people were complaining about unbalanced apostrophes... So I propose we just replace apostrophe with crab in the next Rust edition. Seems like a win all around!

21 Likes
9

Given how crabby the borrow checker can be, that symbolism might actually be appropriate.

9 Likes
10

Regarding sponsoring the apostrophe, there is a relevant webcomic I'd like to share!

The comic, Killer Robots From Space, has sadly disappeared from the internet, so I can't post the original comic, but I can provide a transcription:

Robot1: Hey Josh, what's your favorite punctuation mark?
Robot2 (Josh): Oh, the period. Unquestionably. The period does its job and doesn't take s*** off anybody.
Robot1: Huh. So I've been asking everybody this lately... And nobody even has to think about it. Everybody just knows. What their favorite punctuation mark is. That's weird isn't it? It's kinda freakin' me out.
(pause)
Josh: Um... so, uh, what was, uh Jimmy's favorite?
Robot1: The apostrophe...
Both robots: AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA..!
Josh: Oh, man. What a jerk!
Robot1: You don't have to tell me, my friend!

...but, hey, maybe we can redeem the poor apostrophe.

That said, I have pretty mixed feelings about the idea that the consortium allows sponsorship of characters in the first place.

2 Likes
11

This is a ridiculous idea, which I wholeheartedly support. Count me in.

3 Likes
12

I would contribute.

However, without offense to the OP, I'd favor:

  • A discussion for the tagline (can we edit later by the way)?
  • That the effort be official, rather than grass roots; I would propose the community team to drive it.
1 Like
13

Ferris is (consciously) not the official Rust mascot.

Also, I prefer that to be run by someone who has time and a bank account to collect at hand. If trust over money is the issue, we can definitely help out.

3 Likes
14

Is that to prevent stuff like trademark issues?

15

Not really. Obviously, really official things like the logo and the name are subject to trademarks etc. already and adding Ferris to that would feel odd.

From my perspective, it's that ferris is something that the community already adopted, interacts with and is playful with. I don't see how making it "official" would improve things here. Much the opposite, I feel like it could introduce a barrier.

6 Likes
16

Just tell me where to send the money... :slight_smile:

1 Like
17

Lobste.rs did this a few months ago. I think it's fun so I'll throw some money at it, as well.

18

I'm in (as someone whose official job title was "Emoji Combinatorialist" for a while).

2 Likes
19

This is my first post to this forum, but I've been a Rust enthusiast for awhile. I would love to contribute to the funding program whenever it's set up :smiley:

20

I think that title warrants some elaboration :slight_smile: