Fascinating as this all is, perhaps it would be best if John simply designated a couple of people to spend no more than X hours to make final decisions and put a logo out there (X being a small integer). If it needs to, it can change at some point in the future, as has been noted.
This just isn't worth the amount of time that people are spending on it, IMO, and it's been going on for years now. Time to pull the trigger on something.