Re: GNOME Logo Licensing

[Allan Day]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 12:55 PM, Bastien Nocera  wrote:
...

> That was what I would have said, if Simon didn't put it so eloquently.
> So +1 for a permissive license for the artwork itself, we can control
> its usage through the GNOME trademark.
>

Thanks for the contributions so far.

The main thing the board wants from this thread is to find out which
modules are already shipping the logo and which licenses they're using. It
would also help to know if LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA-4.0 would conflict with those
existing licensing arrangements.

Allan
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Re: GNOME Logo Licensing

[Bastien Nocera]

On Mon, 2017-03-13 at 12:43 +, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2017 at 00:52:25 +, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> > There has been many instances of us protecting our brand by asking
> > people to
> > stop using our logo for commercial purposes, CC-BY-SA/LGPLv3 does
> > grant
> > precisely the right to use it commercially.
> 
> There are two things a third party needs to do to use the GNOME name
> and logo legally:
> 
> * Not infringe trademarks: they need to be either using them in a
>   way that is not protected by trademark law (for instance writing a
>   Wikipedia page about GNOME, or describing MATE/Cinnamon/etc. as
>   being based on GNOME), or using it in a way for which GNOME
>   specifically gives permission.
> 
> * Not infringe copyright: for the logo specifically, they need to be
>   allowed to copy it without infringing the copyright held by whoever
>   designed/made the logo. The GNOME *name* is far too short to be
>   protected by copyright, so this doesn't apply; so GNOME needs
>   (and has) a trademark policy covering at least the name, regardless
>   of what is done about the logo.
> 
> Briefly, copyright is about an author's right to control copying of
> their work (and potentially make money by selling permission to
> copy it). Trademarks are about a vendor's right to not have their
> reputation damaged by applying their name, logo, or other things
> that are recognised by consumers to an inferior product.
> 
> Open source software is unusual because the inferior product is
> often a modified version of the "real" product, rather than a
> reimplementation (for instance Mozilla has had a lot of trouble with
> third parties offering modified versions of Firefox that bundle
> or contain malware, but I'm not aware of anyone publishing things
> that were not based on Firefox at all and calling *those* Firefox);
> but trademarks, not copyright, are the right weapon against that.
> 
> I think what you need here is a trademark license that forbids what
> you want to forbid, in particular using the GNOME name or the GNOME
> logo to identify things that are not GNOME.
>  already
> provides this.
> 
> (Ab)using copyright licenses to do the job of trademarks typically
> leads to using copyright licenses that certainly don't meet the
> Open Source Definition (or similar definitions like the FSF's
> Free Software Definition and Debian's Debian Free Software
> Guidelines), and in many cases forbid perfectly reasonable forms
> of distribution altogether. This is how we got into the silly
> Firefox/Iceweasel situation, which has only recently been resolved
> (Mozilla's logos are now covered by a permissive copyright license
> but a much more restrictive trademark license).

That was what I would have said, if Simon didn't put it so eloquently.
So +1 for a permissive license for the artwork itself, we can control
its usage through the GNOME trademark.

Cheers
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Re: GNOME Logo Licensing

[Simon McVittie]

On Sun, 12 Mar 2017 at 00:52:25 +, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> There has been many instances of us protecting our brand by asking people to
> stop using our logo for commercial purposes, CC-BY-SA/LGPLv3 does grant
> precisely the right to use it commercially.

There are two things a third party needs to do to use the GNOME name
and logo legally:

* Not infringe trademarks: they need to be either using them in a
  way that is not protected by trademark law (for instance writing a
  Wikipedia page about GNOME, or describing MATE/Cinnamon/etc. as
  being based on GNOME), or using it in a way for which GNOME
  specifically gives permission.

* Not infringe copyright: for the logo specifically, they need to be
  allowed to copy it without infringing the copyright held by whoever
  designed/made the logo. The GNOME *name* is far too short to be
  protected by copyright, so this doesn't apply; so GNOME needs
  (and has) a trademark policy covering at least the name, regardless
  of what is done about the logo.

Briefly, copyright is about an author's right to control copying of
their work (and potentially make money by selling permission to
copy it). Trademarks are about a vendor's right to not have their
reputation damaged by applying their name, logo, or other things
that are recognised by consumers to an inferior product.

Open source software is unusual because the inferior product is
often a modified version of the "real" product, rather than a
reimplementation (for instance Mozilla has had a lot of trouble with
third parties offering modified versions of Firefox that bundle
or contain malware, but I'm not aware of anyone publishing things
that were not based on Firefox at all and calling *those* Firefox);
but trademarks, not copyright, are the right weapon against that.

I think what you need here is a trademark license that forbids what
you want to forbid, in particular using the GNOME name or the GNOME
logo to identify things that are not GNOME.
 already
provides this.

(Ab)using copyright licenses to do the job of trademarks typically
leads to using copyright licenses that certainly don't meet the
Open Source Definition (or similar definitions like the FSF's
Free Software Definition and Debian's Debian Free Software
Guidelines), and in many cases forbid perfectly reasonable forms
of distribution altogether. This is how we got into the silly
Firefox/Iceweasel situation, which has only recently been resolved
(Mozilla's logos are now covered by a permissive copyright license
but a much more restrictive trademark license).

S
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Re: GNOME Logo Licensing

[Alberto Ruiz]

Hey Meg,

I am curious, is there any particular reason why we want to open the logo
beyond the current fair use protection?

It seems to me that by opening it we may be enabling unpredictable harming
uses of our most important piece of identity. I do not think it is
comparable to GTK or icon themes in terms of licensing requirements.

There has been many instances of us protecting our brand by asking people
to stop using our logo for commercial purposes, CC-BY-SA/LGPLv3 does grant
precisely the right to use it commercially.

Isn't it better if we keep it under standard copyright restrictions so that
the community can reserve the choice to decide discretionarely which
commercial uses are harming and which aren't?

An example where I think this is harmful is that we may lose the
opportunity to monetize third party entities producing tshirts, stickers or
any other materials for sale, this would allow anyone selling those without
us being able to get any monetary contributions back, unless it was out of
goodwill.

I don't see how open sourcing our logo solves any pressing problems, but I
do see how it would put ourselves in situations we may not like, once
licensed like that there's no going back so I'd be very careful about this.

My personal opinion is that our identity items (trademark and logo) should
stay protected by copyright and fair use as it is right now.

2017-03-10 23:44 GMT+00:00 meg ford :

> Hi,
>
> Recently the licensing of the GNOME logo has come up in board discussions.
> The asset is currently trademarked but we do not have a license for it as
> far as we can determine [0]. We would like to propose licensing the asset
> with dual LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA-4.0. This is similar to the license used by the
> adwaita-icon-theme. Before moving forward with this, we decided to ask the
> community for feedback regarding the proposal. Does anyone have
> comments/suggestions/objections?
>
> Thanks,
> Meg
> [0]  https://www.gnome.org/logo-and-trademarks/
>
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>



-- 
Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz
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GNOME Logo Licensing

[meg ford]

Hi,

Recently the licensing of the GNOME logo has come up in board discussions.
The asset is currently trademarked but we do not have a license for it as
far as we can determine [0]. We would like to propose licensing the asset
with dual LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA-4.0. This is similar to the license used by the
adwaita-icon-theme. Before moving forward with this, we decided to ask the
community for feedback regarding the proposal. Does anyone have
comments/suggestions/objections?

Thanks,
Meg
[0]  https://www.gnome.org/logo-and-trademarks/
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