I like the idea of 2 kois as Yin and Yang
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Second that. Great thing about them is they donāt have to be official(and probably shouldnāt be). Even GNUās got one.
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There will be time for marketing campaigns as completion is reached. For now itās time to file them away and sort them into related categories for future reference. The time will be close at hand before you know it.
The grey (pretty) ones are sky-rat Pidgeons in Australia too. Doves are typically white as memson depicted. I do like the ideaā¦ Doves are associated with peace and co-operation, and attactive abstract logos and images can be concocted to represent birdsā¦
seems a bit juvenile - I get the Be(e) joke - maybe the semiotic pull toward the non-serious is that there are a number of childrensā shows that enlist similar beesā¦ I guess there are different approaches to a bee that could work - they are also fast and agile, so somewhat appropriateā¦
I donāt share your belief. The ācommunityā already has a bond in its common interest in developing, promoting, and using Haiku. I donāt see how a cartoon image from fantasy land is going to make any difference, other than to make many people go Yuk!
Itās not as though Haiku is selling childrensā toys.
Mascot figures are not children toys. A lot of adults are collecting them.
We have Walter as a starting point. Maybe adapt him to something like a Namazu (a fish monster from Japanese mythology), and have him drawn in early 00s anime art styleā¦ He can be Worutaa-San. 
Some Namazu art examples:
The credit for the images: https://tuhis.artstation.com/projects/Dx30Ge, inspired from the Final Fantasy universe.
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I like the first one very much.
But if it gets used as smaller logo/icon somewhere,like Linux Tux for example,it probably has too many details.
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Something for Haiku would be an original representation I believe, these are just examples of different adaptations (and copyrighted work). Maybe a Namazu in disguise of a traditional scribe (e.g. haiku), with less details should be on point.
It would be a serious marketing resource, thinking of all the merchandise the project could sell. Weād just need to find a capable artist, that should have autonomy on the subject, and wonāt face any bike-shed.
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We are not here to sell plushies, we are here to make an operating system.
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But I can program better if thereās a Haiku mascot sitting next to my screen 
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What a toxic attitude.
I thought it was quite funny 
I just dont really see how a mascot fits to be honest. Sports teams have mascots, but companies and open source projects mostly do not. Even tux you can really consider a logo, the mascot thing is not official. And apart from the koi I dont really see how any of the suggestions fit with the haiku branding.
I have a debian t shirt with their logo, but if it was an anime figure or other mascot I wouldnāt have bought it. Unofficial drawings and merchandise etc seem ok, but in my opinion most of the suggestions here are not appropriate for haiku to adopt as official branding if it wants to be taken seriously, and some may provoke considerable criticism.
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Haiku and the leaf already is an association burned into our brains. If a mascot needs to be an animal, why not a living leaf?
Bugs, spiders, probably some crabs and even some geckos exist with leaf camouflage (mimikri?) look.
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Somehow, that statement is much more funny coming from you.
Be careful of ignoring the need for a mascot. Website visitors and users may end up loving an unintended one
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The piggy is also a cute one.
I like the OS-Tans, and while I do not share the objections of some people to them, I understand that some people may not like them .
Many of the ideas of the thread were also good ( could those two Koi fish be replaced with two of the Haiku leaves ? I think it would be a nice yin/yang picture ).
But the same thread shows people cannot agree on the mascot thing, and that is the reason for the no-mascot thing. And also, even if a thread like this is nice, because gets people to show their creativity, it also seems to bring some undesired antagonism and depreciating words, that are better left to /r or other more unruly places.
As said above, we have a long path of developing an OS for now, and the marketing gimmicks can be archived and stored for later times, when they are needed or at least useful.
Oh, the first Namazu looks nice. The other two seem escaped from some opera ā¦
A mascot based on Japanese folklore would be cute and could fit the spirit of the system, for example a tanuki (the raccoon dog, in classic iconography with a leaf on its head is capable of transforming, plus it is endowed with a nice pair of attributes), a kappa or a karasu tengu (this mixes both a bird and a demon, guess which mascot it is inspired by)
Or a sea slug, Iām totally in love with nudibranches, like a leaf sheep
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