Hi Reinhard,
I only care about having the same green everywhere. I don't care for which green exactly.
Obviously it would make sense to take the "hardware" that we already produced as a reference, like the card, the pins, the stickers, the lanyards.
(Although I can't help the feeling that some of them already have different greens)
Me too. It can certainly help to "verify" the color being correct afterwards, but its no use if you want to tell a printer which color he is supposed to use. At least not THAT much use. As for on-screen comparison, I'm not sure how well the FSFE or Fellowship is equipped with calibrated monitors, which would certainly be needed in any form of comparison. I'm not that sure either that we need one green or even two greens fixed. It could already do to just define like one Hue that we vary on, but semi-fix values for recurring elements like the logo.
As to Pantone or not Pantone: My experience is that if you want a printer to print something, he needs the Pantone number. No matter whether it is a flag, a T-shirt, a leaflet, or a sticker. So even though the system may be proprietary, we might not get around having the correct Pantone numbers.
It may be true that most printers use software that can read Pantone Numbers and that its convenient to use, but as I said before - it depends on where you print. Few printers will have the exact color you need and buying it for small jobs is not too common (one bucket is well over a thousand Euros). Printers who have lots of colors in store ready to use are not exactly in the price range of the FSFE either I should think. So that gets us to printers who emulate with CMYK (which is only feasible in small jobs anyhoo) and that again defies the need of making the Pantone Number the central point of reference. Don't get me wrong though - it surely IS a point of reference, but I question its usability.
take care, David