On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 12:18:43 +0200
Harald Sitter <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:46 AM Christophe Giboudeaux
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > On mercredi 17 juillet 2019 23:09:13 CEST Daniel Mensinger wrote:  
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am forwarding my original question about the meson trademark /
> > > license to kde-devel because I was told that more people with
> > > licensing experience will see this here.
> > >  
> >  
> > > > Meson's logo is (C) Jussi Pakkanen and used by the Meson project with
> > > > specific permission. It is not licensed under the same terms as the rest
> > > > of the project.
> > > >
> > > > If you are a third party and want to use the Meson logo, you must first
> > > > must obtain written permission from Jussi Pakkanen.  
> > > Jussi Pakkanen has no problem with giving a special permission for
> > > KDevelop (similar to the VS Code meson plugin), but I first would
> > > like to know if including an icon with such a "license" is OK for
> > > KDevelop.
> > >  
> >
> > This doesn't give any information on the logo license and what it allows/
> > restricts/forbids. Answering your question is impossible without the license
> > text.  
> 
> Well, that's not really true, in absence of anything it's "all rights
> reserved" and that are **unfree** licensing terms unsuitable for us.
> Plus, the website explicitly tells us it's all rights reserved.
> 
> So, the answer certainly is: it is not OK to use because it is unfree.
> 
> There are two huge caveat to this though:
> a) "fair-use" exceptions may apply and make the use OK, but I don't
> think that's the case and in any event the fair-use provisions AFAIU
> are not the same across the world
> b) a trademark may limit freeness despite copyright being free. as is
> the case for all free software projects (KDE included). so,
> all-rights-reserved probably is fine as well **but** only with a whole
> bunch of provisions (i.e. an informal license ;))
> 
> It may actually be best to consult distributions on the matter, since
> they ultimately will need to be allowed to distribute binaries.
> I know debian has a whole bunch of policies on the matter.
> 
> From the github ticket I get the impression what Jussi actually wants
> is trademark protection though and currently he's simply using
> copyright protection in lieu of trademark protection? e.g. KDE's logo
> is trademark protected, but the actual artwork is licensed LGPL. so
> you may copy and edit the svg to your hearts content, but you cannot
> use it to misrepresent endorsement from KDE for example.
> 
> (grain of salt on all of the above of course)
> 
> HS

Thanks for the detailed explanation. So, if I understand this correctly,
the icon would have to be licensed under something like the LGPL.
Alternatively, if meson would add a fair use section (maybe similar to
QT https://www.qt.io/trademark/) this would also work (even with the
"all rights reserved" statement)?

Daniel

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